


going round the twist

by danishsweethearts



Series: upside down and inside out [9]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Age Swap, Dimension Travel, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Gen, Role Reversal, self recognition thru the other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23304376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danishsweethearts/pseuds/danishsweethearts
Summary: There are never one-off incidents. Not when it comes to this family.(In other words, Batfam meets Reverse Batfam 2: Electric Boogaloo)
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, and all variations thereof
Series: upside down and inside out [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686565
Comments: 300
Kudos: 683





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i only know how to write one thing, i guess?????????? updates will be weekly (hopefully lol) feel free to bother me on tumblr/in the comments if i don't stick vaguely to this schedule. saying nice things will motivate me to write more u_u
> 
> set about 1 year after [another set of issues](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23106241). this is a direct sequel lads.
> 
> reverse fam are: damian as shadow, steph as red hood, tim as oracle, cass as knight, jason as rook, dick as robin  
> canon fam are: dick as nightwing, babs as oracle, jason as red hood, tim as red robin, cass as batgirl, steph as spoiler, damian as robin. forgive me bc i am NOT figuring out the canon ages. also steph should actually be batgirl but uh, i like her as spoiler better, and i can do what i want?

“I want it on the record,” Jason starts.

“Here we fucking go,” Tim mutters. He and Steph look at each other and roll their eyes. Jason ignores them and continues on.

“I want it on the fucking record,” he repeats, “that this is all Shadow’s fault.”

Damian makes a calm noise of disagreement. “Why would that be?” he asks. Tone a little icy. Not quite at dangerous levels yet, but possibly approaching. Signs seem to point towards Damian being in a bad mood. Situation should be monitored further.

Tim settles in for a long day.

Jason huffs. “If you hadn’t dragged your weird dimension warping meta villain all the way from Chicago to Gotham, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now,”

“And,” Damian says, looking up into the sky, “if I had remained an only child like god intended, we would not be in this situation now either, because I would not have any siblings to ineffectively barge in on my fights.” Damian gives a very insincere sigh, and looks at Jason. “Tragic how the world never works out like we want, is it not?”

Dick snickers. Jason scowls. Tim rolls his eyes again.

Still, despite the seeming hostility, nobody has really gone on the offensive yet. Makes sense. They should really be trying to get along in situations like these. Or get along as much as they can.

“I’m just saying, none of _us_ have any dimension warping meta villains,” Jason points out. 

Okay, forget getting along. Tim _has_ to say something to that.

Tone dry, he says, “That’s because you aren’t relevant enough to have villains, Rook,”

 _“Oooooh,”_ Dick jeers.

“Ouch,” Steph laughs, “I thought Oracle followed the no-kill rule,”

“Fuck off,” Jason says while scowling. “He’s just salty that our names don’t match anymore and now he’s the only nerd with a Greek mythology name,”

“You’re named after a chess piece,” Tim replies, “how are you calling me a nerd?”

Cass clears her throat. “And what is wrong with chess pieces?” she asks, standing in her newly anointed Knight costume. 

She smiles at Tim. It’s a threat. 

Dick _ooooohs_ again _,_ while Jason and Cass high five.

“At least I don’t change my name every three seconds,” Tim mutters. Everybody in the family sends him an incredulous look at that. 

“Say, who was it that was the first Batboy again?” Steph asks, directing the question to the rest of the group.

Damian _hmms._ “I seem to remember somebody taking up the Shadow mantle for a while, too. Who could it have been?”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Still a better track record than everybody here,” he retorts. Everyone gives him another unbelieving look.

It’s not like he forgot his past names… he just… 

Secretly, he doesn’t really count his time as Shadow as _real._ Or Batboy, for that matter, even though he was Batboy for much longer. He’s never felt more present in himself than he does as Oracle; the versions of himself from the past, that starry-eyed Shadow and that headstrong Batboy, feel like strangers to him now. 

Dick rolls his eyes at the group at large. “You’re all inconsistent and need to get on my level,” he announces. “Come on, standing around is boring. Let’s go explore,”

Tim and the rest of the group all look at each other, then they turn and watch as Dick picks a direction and strides off. His cape billows dramatically behind him as he does, because of _course_ it does. Tim turns back to his family.

Most of them are smiling already, or trying to fight one off. Tim should’ve known that Dick Grayson was the kind of person to land in another dimension and want to explore.

“No exploring yet,” Damian calls out, interrupting Dick’s attempt to scramble up an air-conditioning unit. “We need to figure out a plan,”

“Should we split up?” Jason suggests. He gives Cass a speculative look. “Team Chess?”

“Splitting up in horror movies always ends in everyone dying,” Cass says sagely. She gives Jason an apologetic smile. “Also, sorry, but Team Evil Dads.”

“Fuck yes,” Steph says, fist pumping. “Team Evil Dads for the _win.”_

“Rejected by the person whose name you match with,” Tim says, shaking his head. “Too bad you destroyed Team Greek Gods,”

Jason pokes his tongue out at Tim. “I don’t need Team Greek Gods. Rook is a versatile name, okay?” He turns to Dick, and points finger guns at him. “Team Avian?” he asks.

Dick, now hanging upside down off of the air-conditioning unit, drops to his hands, executes a perfect handspring, and lands beside Jason. 

“Team Avian!” he shouts, putting out a hand. Jason high fives it, and then they proceed to do an elaborate handshake that lasts about fifteen seconds. 

Tim rolls his eyes, but he can’t quite fight the smile that forms at the sight. 

Actually, why is he even trying? Attempting to hide smiles and other forms of positive emotion is a Bruce or Damian thing—have they really influenced him so much? Yikes.

With everybody else paired off, Tim looks over to Damian to find him already looking back. 

Damian raises his eyebrows.

Tim shrugs.

Damian tilts his head slightly.

Tim shrugs again, but with purpose.

“We are not splitting up, so this conversation is pointless,” Damian says, but he does give Tim a thin smile. “Regardless, you will do.”

Tim huffs. “Thanks for the stunning vote of confidence,” he mutters, shuffling closer to where Damian is standing. 

Steph claps her hands together. “Okay,” she says, “now if we _hypothetically_ split up, we know it’s Team Evil Dads, Team Avian, and Team…”

She pauses, thinking. Everybody turns to look at her. Tim is a little worried about what’s about to come out of her mouth.

“...Team Daddy Issues,” Steph concludes, nodding her head. Jason and Dick both giggle. Cass just smiles. Steph looks obnoxiously proud of herself.

Tim closes his eyes, thinks it over very hard, and comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t have the energy to argue with that. Or even come near the subject with a ten foot pole, really. He’s instead going to close his eyes and pretend, for as long as the illusion lasts, that he’s on the Greek Isles with the sun shining above him and the wind in his hair.

Damian makes an irritated _tsk_ noise. The image is shattered immediately. Tim sadly opens his eyes and returns to reality. 

“If anybody were to qualify for that team, it would be you, Stephanie,” Damian snaps. Bad mood confirmed. Should Tim interfere? It might actually be better if everyone got their claws out and sharpened now, when they’re in a relatively safe place, rather than later.

Plus, Damian always fights better when he’s in a bad mood. The anger focuses him. It makes him batshit fucking terrifying, sure, but it _does_ focus him. Very effective in a fight, and even though nothing has happened in this dimension yet, Tim’s planning for a fight. With their kind of luck, there’s always a fight.

Steph cocks her head. “Oh yeah?” she asks, voice low.

Shit, is Steph having a bad day too? Maybe Tim misjudged this. There’s nobody on earth equipped to deal with a pissed Damian _and_ a pissed Steph. Especially not when they’re in proximity.

Damian narrows his eyes at her. Probably to try and figure out if she’s being serious about her goading or not. Honestly, Tim can’t even tell. She probably is. Steph can be like that.

“Yes,” Damian answers cooly, rising to match the challenge in Steph’s tone. “Even leaving aside Cluemaster, you hold the title when it comes to _issues_ with Batman, did you not?”

Tim tries not to visibly wince. Cass looks towards him and manages to catch his eye; they engage in a short, heated, and entirely silent debate about who’s going to defuse the situation. Halfway through, Jason joins in with his own pointed looks and half-formed gesturing. 

Dick sees all of this happen, and facepalms. 

“This is stupid,” he informs everyone, snapping the tension in the group in an instant. “Stop being stupid. Dimension travel is wicked cool and if any of you ruin this for me, I will tell on all of you to Superman, and then Superman will be upset at you, and _nobody_ wants that.”

Nobody wants that. Making Superman upset makes you feel like you’ve kicked the world’s largest most dangerous puppy, which is bad enough already, but it more significantly makes _Batman_ upset, which is a fate that no mortal would willingly bring upon themselves.

It's a very effective threat. Tim's pretty impressed. How exactly did his sweet hyperactive little brother turn into this?

Out of the corner of his eye, Tim catches a brief flicker in Damian's haughty expression; for a moment, he looks _proud,_ which, yup, yeah, that explains exactly how sweet hyperactive Dick turned into this. 

"We raised a totalitarian dictator," Jason mutters, shaking his head in bewilderment.

 _"Damian_ raised a totalitarian dictator," Steph says dryly, and even though those are fighting words, her tone indicates that she's only joking. Or somewhat joking. Either way, Damian doesn't react too badly; all he does is turn up his nose at Steph.

Cass rolls her eyes and points out, "Damian sort of raised most of us,"

There's a moment of silence while they all ponder that.

Then, Jason says, shrugging, "Checks out."

"Checks out," Tim agrees in a dry tone.

"Definitely checks out," Steph sighs.

They all shoot looks towards Damian. He's got an almost-constipated look on his face, and it's only with years of familiarity that Tim recognises that this means he's suffering through the burden that the rest of the world calls emotion.

Oh, right. _Damian raised most of us,_ brought up without any protest or dissent. No wonder he looks like he's going through a crisis. It's almost sweet.

Cass, smiling brightly, says, "So, the plan?"

Damian clears his throat, squares his shoulders, and replies, "Yes, the plan." His expression focuses. "In the last encounter we had with dimension travel, our comms operated on the same frequency as our alternate dimension counterparts. I suggest we try that avenue before anything else?"

Dick wrinkles his nose. "I hope it's not actually those guys," he says. "That universe sucked."

Steph _hmms._ "I'll bet you anything that you just jinxed us, and it is going to be those guys."

Jason pulls out a handful of coins from his pockets, squints at it, and declares, "I'll bet you $10.40 it isn't,"

"You're on," Steph replies immediately. 

Cass says, "$10 that it is,"

The one rule of this family that goes without saying, even if you wilfully want to ignore everything else, is that you never bet against Cass. Tim says, "I'll throw in $10 with Cass,"

"Ugh," Jason huffs. "You all suck, and you're gonna regret this when I'm cashing in,"

Damian makes a face of disdain. "Are you all quite done?" he asks, putting one hand up to his comm unit.

"Wait!" Dick says, before rummaging around in his belt until he produces an incredibly crinkled $10 note. "I'm with Jason," he declares. 

Jason shoots finger guns at Dick, which he returns with a grin and a "Team Avian for life,"

Damian makes the dry snort that usually means he's amused, and then he turns his comm on.

He says, clearly and calmly, "This is the vigilante Shadow. I am from a different dimension. My partners and I have been sent here, and require assistance in getting back home."

There's a reply almost immediately, even though it’s only early evening.

"Holy shit," a voice recognisable as Steph's says, "Shadow? From the whacky reverse universe? The one where I'm the Red Hood?"

Jason groans.

Shaking his head, Tim says, "Never bet against Cass,"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy update day! this is 4k of like, nothing. nothing happens during this, and it changes tonally every 3 paragraphs, but i hope you enjoy regardless.

Dick pouts all of the car ride to the other Batcave, pouts as they descend into the other Batcave, and pouts as they get settled at some randomly pulled out tables and chairs inside the other Batcave. He pouts because he feels like he _deserves_ it. He has _earnt_ this pouting, and he’s going to claim what’s rightfully his. 

Seriously, how unlucky does somebody have to be to dimension travel, which is easily in the top 5 coolest superhero antics, and get stuck in a) a dimension they’ve already interacted with, b) a dimension that _sucks?_

Woe is him.

“Woe is me,” he sighs, sprawled on his back on one of the tables.

Jason looks over, amused. He’s sitting at the end of the table Dick’s lying on to keep him company. Damian and Tim are working at the computer to try and figure a way back, while Steph and Cass are examining the weird shit they have in this cave. 

“You really don’t like this place, huh?” Jason snorts.

Dick crosses his arms, which feels kinda weird, since he’s lying down, but he’s _gunna_ make it work. 

“We’ve already _met_ these guys!” He realizes pretty quickly that crossing his arms just isn’t going to communicate how worked up he is about this, so he starts waving them around. “I want something cooler! Why couldn’t we go somewhere that like, had evil versions of us that we had to battle or something?” he exclaims.

Jason gives a slight grimace. “Honestly, Dickie, that concept’s already a bit too real for me right now,”

Sitting at a table nearby, the other Tim gives a dry laugh. 

“Hood’s not that bad,” he says, turning around in his wheelie chair slowly. Is he doing that on purpose? Does he think that looks cool? Dick wants to tell him that he looks ridiculous, but he’s worried that if he annoys other Tim, he won’t talk anymore. “Definitely not in comparison to _actual_ evil versions of people,”

Dick sits up, shuffling down the end of the table until he’s closer to the other Tim. Narrowing his eyes, he asks, “Have you met one?”

“Yup,” other Tim replies. Oh my god. Dick’s life is _tragic._ Nothing good ever happens to him. 

“It was not fun," other Tim continues. "Trust me. You don’t want to ever meet your evil self. Especially if it’s the one from the universe we ran into.”

Dick makes a face. “Wow, sounds like _somebody_ lost the fight to their evil alternate self,” he says. He shrugs. “Couldn’t be me,”

Jason snorts. “Your humbleness inspires me,” he says, reaching over to ruffle Dick’s hair. Dick bats the hand away, scrunching up his nose.

As this happens, Dick notices something in other Tim’s face. He goes through a complicated face journey; Dick pinpoints... anger, regret, frustration, hurt and maybe a bit of bitterness? It’s only a brief, miniscule moment, but Dick sees what he sees. There's something more going on here.

Interesting. Very interesting. Time to put on his detective hat.

Other Tim crosses his arms and says, “You never know.”

Dick raises his eyebrows at Tim. He looks all broody, the way the Tim in Dick’s universe gets when something is bothering him, so Dick thinks it’s probably safe to assume something is bothering him. 

“That was cryptic!” he comments brightly, leaning in a little. “What was that weird look about? Have any of the others fought their evil selves? You look like you know something about it—" Something occurs to him. He gasps. "Has _older me_ met his evil alternate self?"

Seriously, if older him got to meet his evil alternate self, and Dick’s stuck in this universe with people he’s already met who aren’t even _evil_ and just mildly mean, he’s going to lose it. He’s going to fucking _lose_ it.

“Real subtle with information digging,” Jason snorts.

Other Tim goes tense. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to show any reaction, but Dick’s cheating, because he knows this face and knows these mannerisms, even if it isn’t quite the same person. 

Other Tim seems to pick up on the fact that he’s being analyzed, because as quickly as he tensed up, he visibly relaxes himself, shaking his head as he does. 

“Look, just… stay away from evil universes, okay?” he says. 

Dick huffs.

Jason says, “I’m with him on this one, Dick. I think we have enough evil bastards in Gotham without adding alternate selves into the mix,”

Dick huffs again, with feeling. “I _guess,”_ he sighs. He flops back onto the table. As he stares up at the ceiling, complete with weird stalactites, bats and questionably installed lighting, he realizes something.

He’s so _bored._ This is prime patrol time back in his universe, but the sun is still setting here, so he’s stuck. Unbelievable. There isn’t even any interesting conversation to be had with the alternate people; his older self isn’t here, and other Tim obviously has no clue how to talk to him, and other Steph and Cass left to go to some clocktower, and other Jason also isn’t here, and younger Damian won’t even _talk_ to him. And sure, he could talk to his siblings, but he talks to them every day! What’s the point of being in an alternate universe if you can’t even go anywhere? Or do anything? Or talk to anyone?

He lifts his head up, and thunks it back down onto the table.

Footsteps approach. 

Dick turns his head from the ceiling to see Steph approaching. She must’ve gotten bored of studying the giant penny with Cass. She smiles at him as she arrives, then taking a seat on the table that he’s lying on.

She pats his hair. He sighs and lets it happen. 

“What’s got you down?” she asks.

Jason snorts. “He’s upset that he hasn’t met his evil alternate self through dimension travel,”

Steph gives a gasp. It's out of nowhere, and hearing it startles Dick so much that he sits up, scrambling into an upright position so that he can look Steph in the eye. 

Staring at Dick with an expression moulded into surprise, Steph puts a hand to her chest and exclaims, “Wait, you aren’t the evil one?”

Dick groans and drops back onto the table. _Hilarious._

Jason throws his head back laughing. Even other Tim has a chuckle at that. Dick isn’t looking at her, but he knows that Steph’s got a stupid smug smile on her face. 

Dick manages to be mad for like, two seconds, keeping up the charade of avoiding Steph’s gaze, but then he gives up. He can sense Steph staring at him, waiting for him to wear down, and ugh, yes, okay, it _was_ really funny. 

He looks up at her. She’s grinning.

It’s slow to start, but he grins back. 

“I’m just bored,” he confesses, because this is Steph, and whenever Dick has needed to get away or do something or get out into the world, she’s been the one he’s gone to. Because she gets it. She understands the restlessness that nobody else in the family seems to get, not really.

Steph cocks her head at other Tim. “You heard the kid,” she says, and Dick rolls his eyes because he’s fourteen now and she still calls him _kid._ “Do you guys have anything to do around here?”

Other Tim gives Steph a weird look. Sure, it’s pretty quick to pass, and then he’s giving her an incredibly awkward and stilted smile, but Dick saw. 

What's up with that?

Hmm, according to Jason, Steph and Tim used to date; Dick wonders if that happened here as well. That would make this pretty weird for other Tim, huh?

Steph seems to be taking it in stride though, so maybe other Tim’s just weird in general.

“Well, patrol is starting pretty soon, but I don’t think you guys can come on that,” he says. “I think we have some board games upstairs?”

Dick, Jason and Steph all make unimpressed expressions. Dick didn’t get suited up to play _board games._

“Why can't we tag along on your patrol?” Jason asks. “I mean, can’t say anything for the rest of 'em, but personally, I’m a great team player,”

“You tried to push Damian into a river two days ago," Steph points out.

Jason says, "And I was doing that with your help, ergo, it was a team effort!"

Other Tim raises his eyebrows. "Did he go in?" he asks, which proves to Dick that Tim is smart in every universe; that's the right question to be asking.

Dick sniggers, while Jason and Steph both scowl. 

“Nope,” Dick says with a grin. “You can’t get the drop on _Damian,”_

“Yeah, and you warned him we were coming,” Jason mutters, crossing his arms.

Smiling brightly, Dick says, “Yeah, and I warned him they were coming. Damian took me out for icecream after dunking them both,”

“How does it feel knowing your loyalty is so easily bought?” Steph asks dryly.

Dick makes a show of _hmming,_ putting a finger to his lips and cocking his head as he thinks. “If I had to describe it,” he starts, “it feels like the joy of a delicious post patrol snack with my older brother,”

Jason rolls his eyes and turns back to other Tim. “Like I said,” he says, _“I’m_ a great partner. The rest of them?” Jason makes a show of looking to Dick, and then looking back at other Tim with a shake of his head.

Other Tim laughs at this, even if it’s weak and still kinda stilted. He’s been pretty guarded around them for all of this time, but it looks like he’s slowly loosening up. 

It’s not that surprising, either; out of their family, him, Jason and Steph are the best with people. It’s an accepted fact. It also means that, _factually,_ everybody else ranks below the quasi-crime lord, which will never not be hilarious.

“Well, you do seem more agreeable than Red Hood, but that’s not hard,” other Tim says. “Though your version doesn’t seem that bad, either.” He finishes with a speculative look at Steph. She gives him a vague smile in return.

“Oh, I have my moments,” she says. 

“I don’t doubt it,” other Tim replies. He looks almost sad as he looks at Steph. 

Steph doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, which is fair, because even Dick’s kinda weirded out by all of the projecting that other Tim seems to be doing right now. He leans into her space a little more, and when she turns to look at him, he gives her a smile.

She smiles back, because Steph’s cool like that.

Dick looks to other Tim and says, “So, patrol?”

Other Tim seems to snap out of it. 

Blinking at Dick, he goes, “I don’t know. I have no idea how we’d go about explaining where you guys came from.”

Steph snorts. “Why explain it?” she asks.

Other Tim stares at her. “People would ask questions? It’d be all over the news and the internet. Everybody would want to know.”

Steph raises her eyebrows at him. “Oh, come on,” she says. “You don’t think the idea of the Gotham public seeing six random vigilantes helping out for a night and then fucking off without any reasonable explanation would be funny as fuck?”

There’s a pause. 

Dick, personally, thinks that’s fucking _hilarious._

Slowly, a grin starts to spread on other Tim’s face. 

“That,” he admits, “is quite funny,”

Fuck. Yes. It’s _on._

“So we’re in agreement,” Steph says, grinning back.

Other Tim shakes his head, but he’s still smiling as he does. “I’ll have to talk to the others about it,” he says. “And B, I guess.”

“You know we’re probably going to go regardless, right?” Dick asks, because he feels like it’s important that other Tim knows. He’s warmed up to him. Even though he’s one of the weirdos who couldn’t come up with their own hero name and thus had to steal _his,_ Dick thinks he might be kinda fun, and Dick knows that honesty is the first tenent of a good friendship. So here he is. Practicing good friendship.

Other Tim smiles at him. “I figured,” he chirps. “I’ll ask everyone, then when Dick gets here, he can go tell B.”

Steph says, grinning, “You’re saying that _Dick_ is the Batman correspondent of choice?”

Dick wrinkles his nose. Like, Bruce is cool and all, but he would not get paid to be that. Being the Batman correspondent is a thankless job. Half the time the guy communicates in _grunts._ Like a _caveman._ Dick can’t live like that.

He shudders in horror.

Other Tim raises his eyebrows. “Not his choice,” he replies. “But he’s the oldest, so we all feel comfortable throwing him to the wolves,”

This, of course, brings Dick to the idea of Damian being the Batman correspondent, which is somehow even more ridiculous and affronting. Dick wouldn’t get paid to watch Damian get paid to do that. He wrinkles his nose even harder, and shudders again.

“Who is it for you guys?” other Tim asks.

Dick and Steph look at Jason, who rolls his eyes.

Jason says with a big, exaggerated sigh, “Yes, I suffer the burden of being able to communicate with Bruce for longer than five minutes without any yelling, veiled threats, getting distracted, or passive-aggression. Sometimes I even get lucky, and we have conversations about the weather.”

"Freak," Dick teases brightly. Jason flicks him in the ear in retribution.

Steph shakes her head. "The last time we had a conversation about the weather, he said something about raining justice upon the criminals of Gotham, and when I didn’t laugh it became so awkward that I had to immediately excuse myself from the conversation,"

Oooh, rough. 

“That might be my fault,” Dick says. “I told him that he should try to be funnier around you, and then you would get along more,”

“The problem with that plan,” Steph replies, “is that Bruce isn’t funny.”

“Bruce is funny,” Jason and Dick both reply; Jason out of misplaced loyalty and Dick out of a bad sense of humour. Steph makes a face.

Other Tim interrupts them then, clearing his throat and going, “Wait, _Jason_ is the one who gets along with Bruce best?” 

Jason shrugs. “Cass does as well, but despite that she doesn’t actually listen to Bruce that often, so… yes? I guess it’s me?”

“It’s Jason,” Steph supplies.

“It’s Jason,” Dick agrees.

Other Tim looks like they just told him the Joker was hanging up the crowbar and becoming an honest man. 

“You listen to Bruce,” he says to Jason, disbelieving. “You… get along with and listen to him.”

Jason sighs and rubs a hand across his face. “He’s… God, this is embarrassing.” His cheeks go slightly red. “He’s my dad. We found each other at exactly the right time, for _both_ of us, and… Look, I’m not keen on explaining the circumstances around the creation of this family, but Bruce and I close. We’re very close,”

Steph is carefully avoiding looking at Jason. Jason is carefully avoiding looking at Steph.

Dick sighs. This happens _every time_ Bruce is brought up more than passing. This is why he lives with Damian, honestly!

“The Bruce thing is complicated,” he tells other Tim in a stage whisper. Other Tim nods.

“Yeah,” he says, with a half-formed smile at Dick. “I’m starting to think that’s a universal constant.”

Dick beams back at him. Other Tim looks almost blindsided by the affection, which is kinda funny. He looks like he might have a heart attack if Dick tried to hug him, which obviously means that Dick’s going to try. Maybe he’ll get the drop on him in the middle of patrol. See if Steph will film it for him. Possibilities, possibilities.

Other Tim cocks his head at Dick, and, after pursing his lips, says, “Are you planning something?”

“Nope,” Dick lies, cheerfully. Other Tim doesn’t look very convinced. Then again, Dick’s not trying to be convincing. It’s more fun if they’re a little jumpy.

He hops off of the table and moves closer towards other Tim, taking a peek at his laptop screen as well as an assessment of his costume. He asks, “So, when are the others gonna get here? What’s your vigilante name? What are you working on? You should tell me, since we’re gonna be patrolling together, and all.” 

It would be nice to be able to prove his mettle against a different dimension’s problems. It would also be nice to stop calling other Tim _other Tim_ in his head.

Other Tim blinks at the barrage of questions, but he does lean back from his chair a little to give Dick a better view of his laptop. He says, “I’m looking at a few acquisitions the Penguin did over the past few weeks. It seems like he’s gearing up for something, but I’m not sure what yet,”

Dick squints at the information on the screen. Other Tim’s real meticulous, which Dick could’ve guessed, since his Tim is real meticulous; there’s a map of all of the business moves that the Penguin has made, as well as small bios for each of the acquisitions, as well as the list of potential reasons for purchase, _as well_ as a track record of the Penguin’s finances. It’s… very impressive, Dick has to admit.

“Wow,” he says, “this is thorough.”

Other Tim shrugs, but there’s a sense of pride about him. “I like to be thorough. It gets things solved.” He gives Dick an appraising look. “Any ideas?”

Dick shrugs. “I don’t really know anything about the Penguin,” he replies. Still, he looks over the data; there’s always a chance a fresh perspective could help, and he has been training hard with Damian and Tim. 

“Really?” other Tim asks. “He’s pretty big over here.”

Dick shrugs again. “He’s dead, in my universe. Died before I even became a hero.” 

Hmm, could the Penguin be trying to move some sort of product? But some of these places don’t even sell products, only services; there are some gyms, and also some movie rental places in the purchases. Those places do have subscriptions though, so maybe it’s something about data; then again, why would somebody go to all this length to commit credit card fraud? There’s easier ways to do that. 

Other Tim cuts through Dick’s train of thought with: “Penguin is dead in your universe?”

Dick goes, “Hey, I’m trying to concentrate,” with a huff. Does other Tim not see that he’s got his game face on? Like, come on, he’s the one who asked for help in the first place.

Dick means to look back at his siblings and roll his eyes like _can you believe this guy,_ but then he catches sight of Steph and Jason’s expressions. He reruns the past thirty seconds of conversation through his head. 

Uh oh.

“That was me,” Steph says, putting up a peace sign. She’s not smiling.

Jason rubs a hand over his face. Dick looks back to other Tim.

He looks… unnerved. 

“You killed the Penguin?” he asks quietly.

Steph shrugs at him. “Honestly, not even the biggest fish I’ve fried in my lifetime,”

“I don’t like that you phrase it like that,” Jason says, to which Steph replies by putting up the middle finger. Deserved, possibly, but Jason does have a point. Dick doesn’t like it much either. Mostly because, although Steph acts like it doesn’t, he can tell it really matters to her.

Unlike everybody else in this family, he doesn’t have a hard stance on the whole… um, Red Hood killing people thing. Damian says he’ll probably develop one later in life. Dick doesn’t know about that. Like, on one hand, he _gets_ it, because there are people he looks at in the world and think _you don’t deserve to be here._ He remembers what it was like to stare into Tony Zucco’s stupid fucking face and know that his life was ruined over a petty powerplay, and he remembers how easy it would’ve been, and how justified he would’ve felt, if he had just kicked that bastard’s fingers in and let him drop.

On the other hand, he’s kind of terrified about how easy it would’ve been and how justified he would’ve felt. It’s not a good feeling. If it ever became a good feeling, Dick would drop his mask and never look back.

So, yeah, no hard stance as of yet, but Dick doesn’t like the way Steph talks about it regardless, because he can tell that she _does_ have a stance, deep inside of her. And that stance sometimes is in odds with her actions. And that disparity upsets her, and while Dick feels in no way qualified to have a stance on Steph’s proclivities for murder, he does have one on her being upset. Stance: highly negative. Corrective course of action must be taken immediately.

“What does that mean?” other Tim asks. He sounds like he doesn’t want to know, which doesn’t mean shit, because he’s still asking. Tim will do this thing where he pretends he doesn’t want to ask a question he actually does, so you feel more inclined to tell him, and although Dick isn’t usually the target of this tactic, seeing this random alternate Tim using it against Steph makes Dick kinda want to smack him.

Steph doesn’t need him being overprotective, though. If there’s anybody who can recognize Timothy Drake-Wayne’s patented bullshit, regardless of dimensional origins, it’s Steph, so she just cocks her head at him and smiles.

“You’re smart,” she says, voice steady. “Figure it out.”

Other Tim looks towards Dick. He shutters his expression immediately, because he’s not about to give away anything. Other Tim can dig for information somewhere else, thank you very much.

Other Tim looks at Jason, who meets his gaze and raises his eyebrows, in a clear _dude, really?_ gesture.

Apparently giving up, other Tim shrugs and looks back at his laptop. “Guess it’s none of my business,” he says, which is absolutely right; Tim really is smart in every universe.

Dick looks back at Steph. She looks… over it, honestly, which Dick gets. He puts up a thumbs up in her direction, and cocks his head in question.

She gives him a thumbs up back. He nods. She nods back. Good talk.

He turns back to other Tim, who’s watching them with an amused expression. Dick raises his eyebrows in question.

Other Tim smiles a bit. “You guys are… sweet,” he settles on saying. Dick doesn’t know whether that’s a compliment or not. 

He’s considering the pros and cons of continuing down this line of questioning—honestly, they were only having a conversation: how is that sweet?—when he’s interrupted by the sound of a… motorcycle?

The vehicle entrance to the Cave opens, and somebody comes roaring in.

Oh! Dick perks up immediately. 

It’s his older self, sitting atop a _wicked_ looking motorcycle, already dressed up in his wicked looking costume. Like, the motorcycle matches his costume. Wow. _Wow._

He roars to a stop, skidding in a neat circle in the parking lot, and then turns off the bike. He takes his helmet off. He runs a hand through his hair. He grins in the direction of Dick and everybody else gathered in the Cave. 

Dick closes his eyes and basks in the fact that he grows up to be _so fucking cool._

Then, he turns to his family with the most serious expression he can muster, and says, “If I don’t get a motorcycle when we get back home, I’m going to quit and go live with Roy for the rest of my life.”

Jason sighs and puts his face in his hands. Steph snorts.

“That,” she says dryly, “is between you and Damian, kid.”

Dick grins. It’s cute that they think that _Damian_ is going to be a good deterrent. Honestly, by deferring the problem to him, it’s become almost guaranteed that Dick’s getting the motorcycle. 

He looks over to Damian, who’s looking at his older self with an interested gleam in his eyes. Dick’s like, seventy percent sure that means Damian thinks he’s cool as hell too. He’s so glad they’re in agreement, because it’ll probably give Dick even more negotiating power when it comes to the motorcycle thing.

His older self walks over, his helmet tucked under his arm, and says, “Long time no see, strange alternate Bats. What brings you to our lovely dimension?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks 4 reading! remember to stay inside! if you're bored, consider talking to me here on [tumblr!](https://danishsweethearts.tumblr.com/) see you next week lads!
> 
> a roll call for anybody who's interested:  
> in the cave: reverse!dick, reverse!jason, reverse!steph and canon!tim talking // reverse!cass, reverse!damian and reverse!tim at the computers  
> in the manor: canon!damian, sulking lol  
> coming over from bludhaven: canon!dick  
> coming home from a wayne enterprises meeting: canon!bruce  
> at the clocktower asking babs for info on dimension travel: canon!steph, canon!cass  
> ???????: canon!jason


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! so sorry this is late, i forgot how to write damian. enjoy!

_“Long time no see, strange alternate Bats. What brings you to our lovely dimension?”_

Adult Richard looks as obnoxiously cheerful as Richard tends to be on a normal day, which is not surprising, but does amuse Damian regardless. Despite Richard’s complaints about the universe, Damian is glad that it is this one; all of the hostility has been worked over, and he does not need to worry about making acquaintance or clarifying the situation. There is already an unspoken, albeit uneasy, alliance set into place. It simply makes things easier.

Also, Damian is rather curious to find out more about this universe. More curious still to find out more about Adult Richard.

In response to the previous question, Jason grins and points towards Damian. Internally, Damian sighs.

“It’s his fault,” Jason declares. 

Every eye in the cave turns to Damian, including the newly-arrived Adult Richard. He looks… well, amused. Damian would have preferred to restart their acquaintance with a better second impression than that, but he supposes that Jason is correct, even on the smallest of technicalities. Still, he sends Jason a dark look in response.

Timothy snorts. “Somebody wants to go back into the river,” he murmurs dryly, with a slight smile directed towards Damian. 

“That does seem to be the case,” Damian replies. He almost feels like rolling his eyes.

Still, it seems that Jason’s brazenness does serve Damian well, because after a quick scan of the entire cave, Adult Richard starts to walk towards him. Damian straightens up a little from where he had been leaning on the table. 

Timothy muffles a laugh. 

Adult Richard says, “So, it seems like you’re the man of the moment,” as he approaches. He takes in Damian’s expression. “Possibly unwillingly,” he adds, grinning.

Damian gives a vaguely amused huff. He admits, in his head at least, that he had been in a mood earlier, but this version of Richard is both familiar and different enough to pique Damian’s curiosity. Enough that he feels willing to abandon his brooding, and rise to the friendliness he hears in Adult Richard’s tone. 

“Being the eldest apparently makes me into an easy target,” Damian says dryly. Purposefully raising his voice, he continues, “And Jason has always had rather terrible aim,”

“Hey!” Jason protests. Damian bares his teeth at him in a smile. 

Jason, seeing the implicit threat, returns to his previous conversation with a scowl. 

Damian looks back to Adult Richard, who is obviously trying not to laugh. Damian raises his eyebrows at him.

“Sorry,” Adult Richard says with a chuckle, “you’re just… very different. I haven’t quite wrapped my head around it yet,”

Damian could say the same. He has been watching Richard grow into himself for years now, but he still cannot believe that one day he will be the man standing in front of him, and not his bright little brother. Adult Richard stands comfortable in his own skin, and the energy that buzzes constantly in Richard has not left, persay, but it has been focused. Refined. 

“Likewise,” Damian replies, his smile a bit gentler than he means it to be. He knows that it is, because both Timothy and Cass send him politely amused glances afterwards, looking between him and Adult Richard. 

Then, they look at each other. 

“We’re... gonna go over there,” Timothy says, indicating the tables where the rest of the group has gathered. He’s smiling. The expression is almost smug. Damian feels like he should be annoyed, but he has no idea what the source of Timothy’s smugness is, and therefore has no reasoning behind the annoyance. He just stays silent as Timothy vacates his seat.

Cassandra, before following Timothy, pats Damian on the shoulder. "Have fun," she says, smiling as well.

Damian watches them go, with the suspicion that he is being made fun of in some way trailing on their heels. When he turns back to Adult Richard, there is a smile on the man’s face; something irrepresible and knowing.

Damian cocks his head. “What?” he asks.

Adult Richard shrugs. “Nothing,” he says, but he’s still smiling. He looks towards Timothy and Cassandra. “You fit being a big brother.”

Damian has long stopped looking for external validation about his position in the family, and he certainly does not need it from an alternate version of his little brother who he barely knows, but… it is nice to hear. 

“The result of many gruelling years of practice, I promise you,” he replies.

Adult Richard barks a laugh. “Oh, I know the feeling,” he replies, shooting a fond look towards Alternate Timothy. “Wrangling these brats is a monumental task,”

Damian knows then and there that he has found a brother in arms. “And an unforgiving one,” he adds with an exaggerated sigh.

Adult Richard is quick on the uptake, because he shakes his head solemnly and continues, “Highly unfulfilling, too,”

When he drops the act to grin at Damian, conspiratorial and bright, Damian finds himself grinning back. 

He settles against the table again, relaxing the slope of his shoulders. He is not quite sitting on it; while all of his siblings had a habit of perching themselves on the nearest flat surface, they certainly did not pick something so boorish up from him. However, Adult Richard has no such qualms, because he settles too, propping himself up onto the surface of the table and pushing aside the keyboards and devices to make space.

“So, Shadow, right? Is it cool if I call you that, just to avoid confusion?” Adult Richard asks.

Damian nods. It is the logical thing to do. “Yes, Shadow. And you are?”

“Nightwing,” Adult Richard replies.

“The Kryptonian legend?” Damian asks in return. 

Adult Richard looks surprised for a moment, but then his expression smooths into gentle delight. “Yeah,” he says, “You know it?”

The great rebuilder. The catalyst of change. That is how the legend goes, if Damian remembers correctly. He stares at Nightwing, piecing together the puzzle of what he knows of this man with what he knows of his own little brother.

Damian nods at Nightwing. “Superman told me about Flamebird and Nightwing when I was younger,” he says. He smiles. “It… fits.”

Nightwing stares back at him, beaming. There is a sense of pride in his expression, right underneath the surface, itching to break into the light. He looks like Richard had, when he first became Robin; even now, there is still a deep sense of delight and pride that Richard takes in his vigilante identity. Damian is glad to see that that does not change into his adulthood.

“Thanks,” Nightwing says, his eyes shining earnestly. “I thought so too, when I chose it.”

“You chose it?” Damian prompts. For a second, he is worried that he was too vague, and Nightwing will require clarification, but there is a spark of understanding in Nightwing’s gaze. Even though they have barely talked, Damian feels them already falling into the pattern that he has with all of his other siblings, where there is a deeper understanding to augment every word said or gesture made. It is a little bit stilted, a little bit distorted, because this is not his Richard, but it works regardless.

Nightwing gives a half-smile. “I wanted to be my own hero. Have my own thing.”

Damian raises his eyebrows. “Was Robin not your own thing?” he asks. After the scene that Richard and Nightwing had made in the cave last year, Damian had rather safely assumed that the origins of Robin in both universes were the same. Richard had confessed his hurt over the knowledge to Damian, but naturally, Richard did not know the full story. It will be different to hear it from the source.

There is a shrug, and a casual glance away from Damian’s prying gaze. Looking nowhere in particular, Nightwing grimaces slightly and says, “Will you accept _it’s complicated_ as an answer?”

Damian does want to know, but he was also raised properly. He nods. “It is always complicated,” he says.

“You’re telling me,” Nightwing huffs with laughter. He eyes Damian curiously. “What’s up with Shadow, then? You didn’t choose that?”

Damian shrugs. “I did not. When I first became a vigilante, I did not have a name at all. I was simply there, at Batman’s side. They called me Batman’s shadow, and it… caught on.”

Nightwing raises his eyebrows in clear disbelief. “Batman’s shadow,” he says, sounding out the words slowly. “And you were… okay with that?”

Yes. No. Damian gives him a sharp smile. 

“It’s complicated,” he shoots back at Nightwing. 

It is _very_ complicated. As much as it irritates Damian to think about, Stephanie had not necessarily been wrong when she labelled him with… daddy issues. He is beginning to suspect that regardless of dimension, Bruce lends himself to creating those kinds of problems.

Nightwing smiles back. It is something equally as sharp, but it also holds understanding. Suspicion confirmed, then.

“Fair enough,” Nightwing says. “You never considered taking another mantle, though?”

Something presses into Damian after hearing that question. It is the dull knife of acceptance. 

Looking away so that Nightwing does not catch his expression darkening, Damian replies, “I did. Not just considered. I… I chose a name.” He smiles thinly. “I had my own thing,”

“And now you’re back to Shadow,” Nightwing says, but he does not press any further than that. The comment is exactly that: a comment. An observation, from which Nightwing can extrapolate further information and draw his own conclusions. 

Usually, this kind of scrutiny would irritate Damian, but he finds this time that he does not mind. He will not explain, nor give Nightwing all the answers, but Damian is pretty sure that he does not need the help regardless.

“I am back to Shadow,” Damian confirms.

When Damian looks back towards him, there is a shrewd understanding in the way Nightwing watches him. There it is. Regardless of universe, Richard Grayson has never given Damian a reason to doubt.

“Bruce?” Nightwing asks.

Damian nods. “Bruce,” he confirms. It feels almost sacreligious, to be speaking about his father like this, knowing full well that the other party understands the implications. After all, it is not like Damian goes around willingly sharing the information, and when he does, it is with the expectation that nobody will truly be able to comprehend. This, however, is a conversation made possible only due to mutual understanding.

Nightwing snorts. Shaking his head, he says, “Same here. It’s always Bruce, huh? Even across universes.”

Damian smiles. _“Plus ça change,”_ he murmurs. 

_“Exactement,”_ Nightwing responds, slipping into French and then back easily. “Again I invoke the age old proverb: _it’s complicated,”_ he says.

Damian’s smile becomes more sincere. “It’s complicated,” he agrees. 

They both hold each other’s smiles for a while longer. It is… nice. It is not something that Damian had realized he needed, but being able to discuss these matters with somebody who is both his peer and who understands is genuinely refreshing. When it comes to the rest of his family, who are equally as embroiled in the turmoil of being raised by Bruce Wayne, there is an imbalance that he cannot shake no matter what. When it comes to discussing things with his friends, superhero or civillian, Damian has found it impossible to properly communicate the nuances of his family situation. There is an odd camaraderie that he finds in Nightwing, and it feels… good. Satisfying.

Still, while he is sure that they could go on all night, Damian has no desire to discuss the intricacies of their family problems. Deciding to change the topic, he gestures to the helmet that Nightwing still holds in his lap, and says, “Where did you just come from?”

Nightwing looks down at the helmet and pats it twice, smiling. It is all black, but there are blue decals that match with the Nightwing costume; the obvious care put into the ensemble makes Damian smile even more. 

“Bludhaven,” Nightwing replies. “I actually operate out of there, but there was no way I was missing this,”

Hm. So Nightwing lives in a different city as well, which is to be expected but… Bludhaven?

Damian raises his eyebrows at Nightwing. “Bludhaven is…”

Nightwing grins. “Universally considered awful? A cesspool of crime? Unable to produce a good cup of coffee?” he suggests.

Damian snorts in amusement, but none of those had been what he was going to say. “...Close,” is what he settles on saying.

Now it is Nightwing giving Damian the questioning eyebrow raise. “It’s a pretty good distance,” he says, sounding amused. “And B’s leash only extends so far, after all.”

Damian cannot help it: he makes a face. Nightwing laughs. 

“What?” he says, through his chuckles. “Where did you relocate to?”

Drawing himself up to his full height, Damian answers, “Chicago,”

Nightwing gives a surprised laugh. It is a good sound, Damian decides. It fills him with the same sense of accomplishment he gets when he makes Richard laugh. 

“Oh wow,” Nightwing says, looking both impressed and amused. “That is _far._ Bruce let that happen?”

Damian snorts. “Forgive me for saying so,” he replies dryly, “but I think I place much less weight on what Father wants than you do.” 

Damian is a little worried the comment will put Nightwing off, but all he does is laugh. A throw-back-his-head kind of laugh.

“I don’t know about _that,”_ Nightwing says, shooting Damian a look that borders almost on challenging. “If we’re strictly talking distance, my personal record is California,”

Oh, _that_ is quite the idea. Maybe if Damian was located in California, any wayward villains that decided they were going to be his nemesis would be less inclined to follow him all the way to Gotham in their villainous pursuits.

“And if we are not talking strictly distance?” Damian asks, because he cannot resist a challenge, and he definitely cannot resist one from this version of Richard.

Nightwing grins, reckless and knowing. “Oh, you know,” he says, waving a hand, “the insubordination keeps Bruce young.”

Damian grins. He responds, sharp and pleased, “Indeed. He would have nothing to do if he was not always arguing with us,”

Nightwing laughs again. “Oh man, you _get_ it,” he says, giggling into one of his hands. The sight and sound makes Damian want to laugh too.

Then, he does. It takes some moments, but he finds himself joining in, light huffs of laughter intertwining with Nightwing’s clear peals. 

Now that the conversation has gotten on its feet, there are multiple other things Damian wants to ask; he wants to know more about what happened with Robin, and wants to know how the younger version of him joined the family. He wants to compare and contrast, but more importantly he wants to understand, because over the course of the past five minutes he has come to the conclusion that this, right here, between Nightwing and him, is something incredibly valuable. 

Before Damian can formulate his thoughts properly and pick out the best response, however, somebody approaches.

Ah. Alternate Timothy, looking somewhat dazed and fairly suspicious, walks towards them.

“First off, I want you both to know that we’ve unanimously agreed that this is bizarre,” he says, gesturing back to the others clustered around the table. Damian raises his eyebrows at them, and most of his siblings cheerfully wave back. Of course, he had been aware that they had been staring the entire time, he had also simply… not cared that much.

Nightwing gives Alternate Timothy a grin. “Well, I’m glad you’re getting along,” he replies.

Alternate Timothy grimaces, then looks considering, then shrugs, then looks considering again, all of which happens within a second. “Sure,” he replies. 

“Knock ‘em dead, Timmy,” Jason calls. Alternate Timothy rolls his eyes.

“Anyway,” he says, but there is a slight smile playing at his face, “Bruce is going to arrive in like, five minutes, and the Brady Bunch here want to go on patrol with us, so if you could break the news to him while all of us hide, that would be great.”

Alternate Timothy is obviously expecting some sort of push back, because he looks like he is gearing up for an argument, but Nightwing just nods.

“Sure,” Nightwing says, giving Damian a glance. “Patrolling together sounds fun.”

It does. Damian is still fairly wired up: he had been in the middle of a fight, after all, when they got zapped into this dimension. Patrol would be good to work some of the excess energy off. And possibly talk more with Nightwing, without the knowledge that his entire family was eavesdropping.

Alternate Timothy blinks. “And you’ll tell Bruce?” he asks, sounding confused. Nightwing and Damian look at each other, then Nightwing’s gaze returns to Alternate Timothy.

“I’ll tell Bruce,” Nightwing replies, smiling innocently at him. “No dramas,”

The look on Alternate Timothy’s face indicates that there is, very often, drama. Damian has to hide a smile at the sight. 

“...Alright,” he says, sounding even more confused. “Cool. Okay. Cool.”

Nightwing looks like he is about to burst out laughing any second now. Damian does not know the exact context of the situation, but he can sense when a little sibling is being made fun of, and he has never turned down the chance to mess with Timothy.

“Run along now, Timothy,” he cuts in. “We can deal with Bruce,”

Nightwing grins at Damian. Alternate Timothy’s expression flickers again, running through several feelings, before settling on mildly alarmed. Damian smiles at him. 

The alarm only increases. 

Alternate Timothy gives Nightwing another bewildered glance, then looks back at Damian, and evidently decides to give up on the conversation and walk away. Smart move. 

He looks to Nightwing, who smiles back, and offers his hand for a high-five. Damian grins and high-fives him back with relish.

“Usually, I make more of a fuss when they get me to tell Bruce things,” Nightwing explains. Damian understands that. He left to Chicago to escape being the designated Batman diplomat. Most of the time, his siblings cannot even convince him to parley with Bruce. Damian loves his father, sure, but having to negotiate with him is… Well. It is complicated.

“I can hardly imagine why,” Damian says dryly. “Father is a delight,”

Nightwing laughs. “Isn’t he just,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Ah, well. At least I’ve got backup this time.”

Damian tilts his head in a noncommittal gesure. “I cannot promise that I will be any help,” he says. “I am very out of practice with trying to reason with Batman,”

“Don’t tell me you’ve pushed the job onto one of your siblings,” Nightwing snorts. “Seriously, don’t. I’ll be so jealous,”

Damian gives a pleased smile. “I did not need to push the job onto anybody. Jason embraced it himself.”

Nightwing does a double-take at that. Eyes wide, he says, _“Jason_ is the Batman go-between?”

“They get along well,” Damian nods. He is aware that this is a sore point for a few other members of the family, but personally, Damian has long moved past it. “He is probably the one closest to Father, on conventional terms.”

Nightwing looks, for the first time in the entire conversation, genuinely taken off guard. He seems to be thinking it over, though; the consideration and scrutiny is clear on his features as he works through the idea. Damian can only imagine how different it would be here, if this universe’s Jason is the Red Hood. 

Finally, Nightwing’s expression clears. Somewhat. The confusion and shock has left, but they have been replaced by something almost resembling sadness.

“Honestly, I…” he says. “It makes sense.”

“It is different here,” Damian prompts. Nightwing nods. He rubs the back of his neck.

 _“Very_ different,” he replies. “But, I can kind of see how that would’ve worked out. If the circumstances were changed.”

Again, Damian wants to press the matter, wants to find out exactly what it is that Nightwing is dancing around. He does not. He just nods, and looks past Nightwing to watch Jason joke around with the others.

He thinks that everybody has been resolutely trying to ignore it—something he can understand completely—but there is a glass case in this cave, with a Robin costume immortalized in it. 

There is a glass case, and there is no Red Hood. Damian can figure out the story from there. 

Nightwing, noticing that Damian is looking away, follows his gaze until he is looking at Jason and the others as well. Cassandra has Richard on her back, and is sitting next to Timothy; all three seem to be contentedly watching as Jason, Stephanie and Alternate Timothy bicker and talk. It is a good image. Even with the addition of Alternate Timothy. It has been years of them being a family, officially or unofficially, and something still sparks in Damian’s heart when he sees them acting like it. 

Smiling sadly, Nightwing says, “He looks so… comfortable.” There is a wistfulness in his tone. Hearing it makes Damian’s heart feel bruised.

“He has come a long way,” Damian says. He does not bother to conceal the fondness in his tone. 

Jason, as if he could tell he was being watched, turns around to meet Damian’s gaze. He raises his eyebrows at Damian in question, and when Damian does not offer any reply, he decides on sticking his tongue out and returning to the conversation.

Nightwing laughs.

Damian rolls his eyes. “Still a brat, of course,” he adds.

Nightwing smiles, and it seems brighter this time, like he has decided to shake off his sadness. “I think it’s Jason’s universal prerogative to be a pain in the ass,” he mock-whispers. 

“At the very least, it is a talent,” Damian says with a sly smile, “One that he puts to use frequently,”

“We’ll have to compare notes on handling it,” Nightwing says, returning the sly look. 

Damian feels the urge to laugh again, and he gives in easier this time, letting the feeling bubble up in him. He cannot remember the last time he had fun discussing his varying and abundant family problems, yet something about Nightwing makes all of the conversation easier and smoother. It is actually quite enjoyable. Who knew that talking about your problems could be so productive.

Nightwing, grinning, says, “Man, this is so weird,”

It is weird. Damian has decided that the best way forward is to mostly ignore the fact that this is a different version of Richard, because if he thinks about it too hard, he feels a headache beginning to form. That being said, something about the fact that it _is_ an alternate Richard pleases him; Damian would not trade his relationship with Richard for anything, but this dynamic has plenty to offer, he realizes.

It is very weird. That is not to say it is bad.

He inclines his head and says, “I will admit I never anticipated this, even with how strange the vigilante life can be,”

Nightwing meets Damian’s gaze, eyes glinting, and says, “Not bad, though?”

Damian smiles at him. “Not bad at all,” he says. It is possibly an understatement. Nightwing can figure that one out on his own.

They smile at each other, and yes, it is _so_ weird, but Damian is having… fun. He finds himself looking forward to the patrol, and rather unconcerned with how he is going to get back to his own universe. At least he can enjoy himself while he is here.

He realizes that he has become thoroughly distracted when somebody comes down the stairs to the Cave without him picking up on it. Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, he turns away from Nightwing to see his father at the bottom of the stairs, staring at the scene in the Cave. His alternate self stands slightly behind his father, scowling.

Damian and Nightwing look at each other. Then, Nightwing turns back to Bruce, waving.

“Hiya, B. You won’t guess what happened again,”

Looking shocked, though only by Bruce Wayne standards, and not by the standards of the rest of the world, Bruce looks around the cave. Once. Twice.

On the third time, his gaze stops on Jason. 

“I think,” he says slowly, as if he is collecting his thoughts, “I might have a few ideas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh man, you guys have no idea the willpower its taking me to not make this entire fic just chapters and chapters of reverse!damian and canon!dick ineracting. writing this was bliss. this is my happy place. i want this to be a real thing in dc. my kingdom for a spinoff series of them going through the multiverse and having shenanigans and getting along, called smth super cheesy like "across the universe" or "a tale of two brothers". dc are you listening to me.
> 
> roll call:  
> reverse!damian & canon!dick: chatting up a storm by the batcomputer  
> reverse!steph, tim, jason, cass, dick and canon!tim: by some tables watching this unfold in horror  
> canon!steph and canon!cass: at the clocktower  
> canon!bruce and canon!damian: coming down the stairs  
> canon!jason: ?????
> 
> thank you for reading! stay safe! my [tumblr](https://danishsweethearts.tumblr.com/) if yall wanna talk! see u next time i promise to not be late


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im! sorry! this! is! so! late! i was like oh yeah, jason pov chapter, thats gonna be fun! i got this! and. i did not got it. i can't tell if this is good or not im sorry in advance

_“I think I might have a few ideas.”_

The first person to move, after Bruce says that, turns out to be Damian. Like, tiny child Damian. 

He steps out behind Bruce, passes over Jason and the rest of them with a huff, and heads straight towards other Dick and his alternate self.

He sends a suspicious glance at Shadow, which is a pretty hilarious image, and then he turns to other Dick.

“You did not inform me of your arrival,” he says, crossing his arms.

Strangely, Jason can’t get a read on Kid Damian at all; there’s a sharpness about him that’s pretty rare in Shadow nowadays, and Jason doesn’t know how to look around it. Tim probably knows. Cass definitely knows. 

A look at both of them shows that they're watching the scene unfold with strange, nostalgic looks. 

Dick smiles something indulgent at the kid, saying, “Sorry, Damian. I just figured you’d be down here already when I arrived, and then I got caught up talking to Shadow,”

Kid Damian huffs, sending another suspicious look towards Shadow.

“Talking to... Shadow,” he repeats, pout forming around the words. Seems like he’s pretty attached to Dick. Unsurprising, really.

Dick laughs softly. “Your alternate self is pretty cool.”

Kid Damian scowls.

Dick just smiles in response. Even Shadow is smiling, staring down at this bratty version of himself, which looks kinda weird, but mostly makes Jason want to tease him for being a huge softy. 

“Envy is unbecoming, _asfour,”_ Shadow says gently. Jason doesn’t know what it means exactly, but he’s heard Shadow call Robin that enough times to know he’s being embarrassing, the fucking sap. Man, Jason is going to rib him mercilessly when this is all over.

Glaring over Cass’ shoulder, Robin huffs at the sound of his nickname. Jason looks back towards Shadow, but it seems that he doesn’t notice. Oof. He can’t wait to see Shadow resolve that one.

Kid Damian stares in open shock at Shadow. For a few seconds, there is something purely unguarded in his gaze as he looks up at this version of himself; a person who, being real, he probably can’t even _imagine_ becoming. 

Jason knows that he has an untenable soft spot for kids, but when he starts to find this angry brat Damian cute, he officially declares himself a lost cause. 

Kid Damian spits out something in what Jason can recognize as Arabic. The tips of his ears are red, but he seems more vicious than anything when he speaks. It’s… an interesting contrast, to say the least. Again, Jason can’t tell if it’s cute, or if his fondness for kids and for Shadow are combining to cloud his judgement. 

Shadow, who has plenty of experience in being yelled at by angry children, just gives a dry snort. He replies, also in Arabic, and before Jason can fully process it, Kid Damian shoots back a reply.

Then it’s like a race: the gun has gone off and they’re both rocketing forward, quickfire responses overlapping as they talk, or argue, or discuss, or whatever it is that seems to be happening. 

Shadow is enjoying it, Jason can tell, as he snipes back and forth with this child, but what doesn’t become evident until later is that Kid Damian is enjoying it as well. Something in his expression sharpens, and Jason can eventually place it as the glint of pride and of happiness—a glint that swells up and replaces the odd hurt and confusion of before, and with that, Jason realizes. Oh. _Ohhh._

Wow, Shadow is kinda good at this, huh?

Dick is watching them go back and forth, something utterly delighted in his face. Jason doubts that he understands, at least not fully; all of their family have had their brushes with learning Arabic, but the language that Shadow grew up with, the mish-mash of League Arabic and Pakistani Urdu and other influences, is nearly impossible to grasp. 

This is actually one of the only opportunities he has to speak it with somebody who will understand perfectly. No wonder he looks so pleased.

Kid Damian says something, snapping out words that mean nothing to Jason but sound like victory all the same, and when Shadow falls silent, Jason knows he had been right. 

Shadow’s smiling, though, so it’s probably less of a victory and more of a mutual agreement. 

There’s a smile on Kid Damian’s face too, and although the expression is a little slimmer, Jason is starting to recognize the other signs of happiness. The way he stands taller. The way his eyes shine. Jesus, was Damian really like this when he was younger? Jason can’t even imagine it. Damian now is tall and steady; was he really once this child, moody and withdrawn and desperate for recognition, that Jason sees now?

Wild stuff. _Wild_ stuff. Jason doesn’t know that he’s a fan of this whole humanizing-the-older-brother-you-pretend-doesn’t-have-feelings-most-days thing going on right now.

Everything is silent for a moment, as Kid Damian and Shadow size each other up, and then somebody clears their throat.

It’s Bruce. 

Jason, so distracted by the ever-riveting Wayne-Al Ghul dramatics, had actually forgotten he was there. Shit. He feels kinda bad, but as then he focuses in on Bruce, he notices the way he’s standing and the spot he’s taken up, and realizes something. Jason can’t read this universe’s Bruce like he can his own, but he’s pretty sure that Bruce is… purposefully trying to fade into the background. Like he’s… uh… hiding?

With a sour expression, Bruce mutters, “I can understand some Arabic.”

Jason has no idea where that came from, but Kid Damian and Shadow both react. Something to do with their prior conversation, then. Did Shadow really meet his alternate self and start talking shit about Bruce in his mother tongue? Jeez, that’s… Actually, wait, okay, that’s pretty in line with what everybody _but_ Jason would do in that situation.

Sticking his nose up, Kid Damian mutters, “I stand by my words.” 

Bruce looks like he doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s still sulking about in the shadows by the cave entrance, and Jason has to wonder. Does he just do that all the time here? There’s like, a fair amount of lurking in the shadows done by Bruce in his universe, but Jason feels like this is excessive.

Then other Dick rolls his eyes and says, “C’mon, B, we have guests. Get over here.”

Not normal, then. What is Bruce trying to hide from? 

He huffs and steps further out into the light. He’s still in his civillian work suit, but there’s something very _Batman_ about the way he steps forward. It’s the familiar, steady approach of a shadow. He moves closer to the group of them clustered around the tables, looking weirdly cautious, and then stops a few feet away.

“Tim,” he says shortly. “Fill me in.”

Timmy snorts. 

Waving a hand around, he deadpans, “I don’t know what to tell you, Bruce. It’s us from a different dimension.” He gestures over to the computer. “Look, there’s Damian.” Then he points at Steph, and starts to go down the line. “And then Steph, and then, oh, there’s Cass! And Dick! And, woah, me! And, wow, would you look at that, it’s Jason. So many new and interesting people! Instead of asking me to fill you in on a situation that obviously doesn’t require elaboration over one sentence, make some friends. Go on. I believe in you.”

Jason tries really, really hard not to laugh at the affronted look on Bruce’s face, but it’s _real fucking close._ Robin, Oracle and Red Hood don’t even try. Knight manages a measured grin. 

Bruce seems to collect himself, drawing up his back just that bit straighter and fixing his expression just that bit more, as he surveys everybody gathered. His gaze is as analytical as Jason would’ve expected it to be, so the scrutiny doesn’t bother him; plus, he works with Bruce, so he deals with this shit on the reg. 

However, Red Hood and Oracle both stiffen or fidget under the attention. Surprisingly, so does Robin. Shadow is definitely teaching him bad habits up in Chicago.

Eventually, Bruce’s gaze lands on him.

It seems that everybody is interested in this standoff, because even the group around the computer have fallen quiet.

Bruce stares. It’s not that surprising to Jason, because in _his_ universe, Bruce usually looks to him for explanations, or backup, or sympathy, but it still feels weird. Off. After all, he knows that this universe is different. 

Still, it’s Bruce, and he doesn’t even look that different, and _still, it's Bruce;_ Jason can’t really help the pleased glow at being focused on first out of everyone. 

He lifts his fingers in a wave and smiles. 

Bruce just… stares at him, his face blank. Like, _Batman_ blank, which is weird and uncomfortable but, uh, okay, Jason figures he can give the guy a break. If the relationship between this universe’s Bruce and this universe’s Jason is anything similar to the one between his Bruce and his Steph then… then…

Shit. Then maybe he should be worried about getting kicked out of the Cave. They’ve been getting along more as of late, but getting along by Steph and Bruce standards means like, having two arguments a week, instead of seven. 

Then again, the blankness on Bruce’s face doesn’t seem to be an angry one. It’s just… void. He’s probably doing some intense projection right now, and Jason gets the feeling that a wrong move could have a far bigger impact than intended. And, since it’s Bruce, there’s a likely chance that _any_ move is a wrong move. 

In the silence that seems to reign supreme in the Cave, somebody makes a noise. It’s the other version of Dick.

“Seriously, B,” he calls, scoffing and rolling his eyes, “just say _hi.”_

Bruce finally looks away from Jason, glancing over at other Dick with an expression that can only be described as spooked. When he looks back at Jason—jesus, it’s almost _immediate,_ like he can’t bear to look away for too long—there’s an unsteady, hesitant light in his eyes. Honestly, he looks kind of constipated.

He doesn’t say anything, though. He looks like even _hi_ is too foreign of a syllable to attempt.

Luckily for him, Jason’s a proactive guy. Something about offense being the best defense, or always getting in the first punch, or all of those other important lessons they teach you out on the streets; regardless, he’s a man of action, and that extends outside of the battlefield and into his personal life. Which, honestly, aren’t even that distinct of concepts anyway.

He looks over to his family. To them, it must be obvious what he’s about to do. Oracle rolls his eyes, while Knight and Robin both just smile at him, and Hood is too busy avoiding looking in Bruce’s direction to pay attention to him. Still, it’s enough support to get him confident, so he hops off the table and walks towards Bruce.

“Hi,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I hope this is as weird for you as it is for me,”

Bruce… continues to stare at him. The silence drags on and almost, _almost_ reaches an awkwardness of unsalvagble proportions, but then Bruce speaks.

“Hello,” he says. In the one word, he manages to fit a world of hesitation and insistency. Jason gets the feeling he might be in over his head with this one. 

Bruce adds, “This is very, very weird for me.” He shuffles slightly. Fixes his tie. Swallows. 

Oh. Bruce is _nervous._

Jason snorts. “Glad to see we’re on the same page,” he says. He waits a few beats of conversation, just in case Bruce feels like contributing anything, but all he does is stare and continue to very, very subtly fidget.

Okay. _Come on, Jason._ Offense is the best defense, etcetera. Faced with the continually building awkward silence, he continues with, “I’m Jason. But, uh, you know that already. I go by Rook, though, when I’m in the mask. That’s different. I’m certain that’s different.” 

Bruce seems to be slowly snapping out of whatever had been eating him prior though, because when he replies, it’s with an expression that could _almost_ pass as a smile, if Jason squinted and closed one eye and turned the lighting up and put on glasses. 

“Rook,” Bruce repeats. He looks past Jason a little, to where the rest of the family stands. His gaze flickers back. “You match with Robin.” 

Oh, _right._ Jason had forgotten that Robin happened here too. 

Actually, what were they going to do about that? If they go out on patrol, there’s going to be two Robins on duty: that could get messy and confusing _very_ quickly.

Plus, Robin, Jason’s Robin, is _not_ a sharer. Duh. It’s his mother’s name for him. God, this universe is _whack._

With a shrug, Jason says, “Yeah, we match. And Cass over there is named Knight, so we match too. Double whammy.”

Something in Bruce’s expression changes then. The emotions move so fast that Jason can’t quite pinpoint them, but among them he can pick out a brief, desperate longing; a quiet satisfaction; a resigned mourning. There’s a story here, and he knows enough to be able to feel out the edges. He just isn’t able to fill it in completely. He doesn’t really think he wants to fill it in completely.

Bruce says, now having gotten over his fleeting moment of emotional vulnerability, “That is… nice.”

 _...Nice,_ he says. Yeah. Sure.

Trying not to laugh _too_ hard at the obvious _why-the-fuck-did-I-just-say-that_ expression on Bruce’s face, Jason responds, “Sure is. Makes for some entertaining patrols. Team names, themed costumes, all of that fun stuff.”

“Ask him about patrolling together!” other Dick sings out. Jason is pretty sure that they had agreed that that was _his_ job, but he supposes he is already here and talking to Bruce. Bruce, who raises his eyebrows, looks at other Dick with that expression, and then bring back the eyebrows of polite doubt to Jason. 

Jason takes a quick moment to stick his tongue out at other Dick, who just laughs, and then gives Bruce his best reassuring smile. 

“Speaking of entertaining patrols, me and the rest of those losers want to go on patrol tonight,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the rest of his family.

Robin calls, “Tell him we’re not taking no for an answer!”

“Apparently we’re not taking no for an answer,” Jason repeats. 

He pauses. 

Something occurs to him. 

Jason turns, glares at both Robin and other Dick, and snaps, “Hey! Tell him yourself, assholes,”

Bruce snorts. 

Grinning, Robin chirps, “And I want fries on the side as well!”

Fuck, that catches Jason off guard; he barks out a laugh. He knows he’s supposed to be annoyed, but god, the kid can be funny, and Jason’s not about to let down _that_ punchline. 

He turns back to Bruce and deadpans, “And Robin wants fries,”

“Duly noted,” Bruce says. Again, that almost, not-quite, gold-star-for-effort smile plays at his expression. Jason’s not unused to seeing the expression, but he is unused to having it directed at him. It makes for… weird feelings that Jason will definitely ignore for as long as he can, but he tries not to take it personally. There’s history here he’s stepping all over. 

Doesn’t help that his alternate self isn’t even showing his face. Like, it does track; in his universe, Red Hood showing up to the cave generally amounts to a fight of such epic proportions that Shadow will drag himself back from Chicago to spectate. Sometimes to mediate. Usually just to spectate. 

It tracks, but it still doesn’t help. 

Bruce opens his mouth and then thinks better of it. He clenches and unclenches one of his hands. Uh oh. Jason’s definitely let the silence drag on too long. He’s like, way too aware of everybody else’s gazes on him, and he feels a bit annoyed that everybody is just _watching_ this happen and mostly just. Bewildered. Talking with Bruce requires a lot of filling in the blanks, but Jason’s got no idea what gaps he’s even _looking_ for with this Bruce.

Bruce starts to look constipated again, as he stares. Jason finds he can’t really meet his gaze for too long, because if he does, the constipation starts to morph into this tragic, kicked-puppy look that does not belong on Bruce Wayne’s face, and Jason is really _not_ equipped to deal with that.

“So, um,” he attempts, “patrol?”

Bruce shifts his weight onto the other foot. Shifts it back. Plants his feet.

“Yes,” he says, “patrol. I… It should be. Fine.”

Jason nods. “Cool,” he says. “Wicked cool.” 

_Wicked cool._ Jesus christ. He would give anything for Shadow’s weird fucking dimension warping meta to pop up and zap him somewhere else right now. Anywhere. 

What happens instead is the outside entrance to the cave shudders open, and a car pulls in. It doesn’t remove Jason from the situation, but it does provide a distraction from the dying remains of the conversation he was having with Bruce, so he’ll take it.

He recognizes the vehicle as the one that alternate Cass and Steph had driven off in when they first arrived, so he knows who he’s expecting when the doors lift open. The purple still makes him snort, though. He can’t imagine his Steph ever dressing up in something like that. 

Other Cass lightens up when she sees Bruce in the cave, and she walks over immediately.

“Bruce,” she says, smiling. “You’re home.”

Bruce does his weird approximation of a smile in return as his attention turns to other Cass. Jason figures he can excuse himself from the conversation now. 

Bruce says, “Yes. It seems I’ve walked into quite the situation,” and Jason starts to move back towards the others.

Only starts, though. Only _starts,_ because as soon as he takes his first step, Bruce’s head whips around to look at him so fast he could give the Flash competition. Jason freezes in place under the sudden stare: wide-eyed and thoroughly confused.

Bruce stares. 

Jason stares.

Neither of them move.

“Oh my fucking god,” somebody in the background whispers.

They stare some more.

“This is embarrassing to witness,” another person mutters.

Yup. More staring.

Other Cass sighs and crosses her arms. “Bruce,” she says.

Bruce jerks again, looking between her and Jason, and seems to come back to himself. 

He straightens up, hands clenched, and grits his teeth in what Jason assumes is supposed to be a smile.

“Carry on, Jaylad,” he says. _Jaylad._

Jason’s got just the right line of vision to see other Dick wince.

Bruce, after that hangs in the air for an uncomfortably long time, adds, “I mean. Jason.”

“Okay,” Jason says, taking one step away. God, he hopes he’s not blushing. “I’m gonna. Go over there. Good talking, Bruce.”

He turns his back and walks towards his family as fast as he can.

Hood is covering her eyes. Robin and Knight both look amused-cum-mortified. Oracle just looks amused.

He pats Jason on the shoulder as he passes, heading straight for the back of the group. 

“You’re a hero,” Oracle says, unable to keep the grin off of his face.

“Shut the fuck up,” Jason mutters, arriving at his destination next to the Robin-Knight unit. He hesitates for a second, and then hides behind them. Fuck it. That interaction had just stamped out any of his ability to feel shame.

Robin pats him on the shoulder. 

“Always room for you in Chicago,” he says.

“Thanks,” Jason mutters.

A splash of purple in his periphery catches his attention, and he lifts his head to see other Steph making her way to the computer. As she does, she passes Bruce.

“Man, you’re a trainwreck,” she tells him cheerfully. 

Next to him, Hood mutters, “Amen.” There’s a smattering of laughter from everyone gathered around her.

Other Steph arrives at the computer and puts a USB on the table. “This is everything Babs had on dimension travel, but she says that it’s mostly magic-related cases, so we doubt it’ll be useful.” 

Shadow shrugs. “Anything will help. Thank you.”

Other Steph nods at him. She looks at other Dick, and smiles. “She says hi, by the way.”

Other Dick grins. “Yeah, she texted me saying that.”

With a roll of her eyes, other Steph says, “What was the point of telling me to do it, then?” and they both laugh. 

Jason can’t really believe that Robin’s loud friend from karate is such an integral part of the family here. At the moment, the most interaction any of them have had with her is listening as she complains about Robin. Or listening as Robin complains about her. Plus, she’s like, 12. No 12 year old should ever be in a vigilante costume unless they were raised by assassins. Or raised in a circus. Two things that are possibly one and the same, with all the clownery that the League commits.

They must be thinking along the same lines, because other Dick looks over to Jason and the others and asks, “So, has Babs forced her way into the family yet?”

“Nope,” Robin replies, popping the _p._

Shadow shakes his head. “May it remain as so for as long as possible,”

Robin scoffs. “Babs is too good for this schtick anyway,” he says. “She’s all, ‘I’m gonna grow up and dismantle the justice system’ and not ‘my parents are dead and I need an outlet’.”

Bruce makes a strangled coughing noise. It takes Jason a few seconds to identify it as a laugh, or something along those lines. 

“Isn’t she like, twelve?” Oracle asks. 

Robin nods. “Yup. Twelve and probably smarter than half the people here.” He’s smiling, proud and bright, like it’s him who’s showing off. Hmm. _Hmmmmm._

“You got a crush on her, Rob?” Jason teases, because, come on. He has to. 

Instead of flushing red or hiding his face in Knight’s hair or something similarly hilarious, though, Robin just makes a face.

“No, Rook, what the heck. She’s my friend. She asked me on a date like, once, and that did _not_ go well.”

What?

 _“What?”_ Shadow says sharply. 

Jason looks at Oracle. Oracle meets his gaze, and then looks at Knight. That’s a no, then. Jason follows his gaze.

Knight looks at both of them, and shrugs. Also a no. 

All three of them turn to look at Hood and—she looks away. Ah. _Bingo._

Robin, somehow conducting all of this conversation while still on Knight’s back, shrugs. “Yeah, like, last month.”

Shadow looks like he’s on the verge of a crisis. “Last month?” he snaps. “How did I not know this?”

“Right?” Robin says. “Getting rusty, Damian.”

Holy shit. Jason is going to put _the bravest man I ever knew_ on his headstone.

“If it helps,” Hood says, “I partly chaperoned.”

 _“What?”_ Shadow snaps again. Matching headstones, Jason thinks. _Bravest man and woman I ever knew._ Side by side. It’ll look lovely.

“Wait,” other Dick cuts in, “you two went on the date but you aren’t dating?” He looks confused. Like, _really_ confused. Jason would interrogate that further if he could, but he’s too busy trying to figure out how to interrogate Robin.

Robin nods. “Yeah. I just don’t like her like that.” Then, he adds, “By the way, this is super weird. Like, I’m fine with it, but I just want you all to know that this is the weirdest setting to discuss this.”

“Why did you go on the date, then?” other Dick asks. He stops, as if thinking about something. “Actually, don’t answer that. You’re right. This is very weird.”

“Too late, you asked it,” Robin says, and then continues with, “To try it out. And I wanted free food.”

“Dude,” Timmy says, “your dad’s a millionaire.”

Robin sends an askance look at Timmy. “Dude,” he replies, “my dad’s _dead.”_

 _“What?”_ rings out from several people in the cave. 

Robin looks around in bewilderment.

“Did that… not happen here?” he asks. “With Zucco? And the ropes? Y’know?” 

He looks at his alternate self. There’s something shining in his eyes.

Other Dick’s expression is solemn. “That happened,” he confirms quietly. Everybody pretends not to see the way Robin deflates a little. “I think Tim was talking about Bruce, mini-me.”

“Oh. Right,” Robin says, managing to keep the disappointment out of his tone but not his expression. “B didn’t adopt me. We’re like, family and stuff, but he’s. Uh. Not the first person I think of when I hear dad.”

Jason has the feeling he’s not even the _second_ person Robin thinks of. He looks over to Bruce, wondering what his reaction to all of this is. In this universe, Robin had been the first to get taken in. _And_ he’s the Batman correspondent. That says something. That says a lot, actually.

Jason looks, and he doesn’t think he likes what he discovers. Bruce is doing it again, starting to draw back into the shadows, but even that doesn’t hide the look on his face. The unguarded pain sitting on his features.

Jason looks away, because otherwise he’ll want to get up and hug Bruce, and he’s pretty sure that’s a bad idea. Or at the very least, an idea with very far-reaching long-term consequences that Jason doesn’t know and may not even be here to handle. 

“I didn’t adopt you?” Bruce rasps.

Robin shakes his head. Bruce’s expression shutters.

Oracle, his eyes squeezed tight in a wince, says, “That’s mostly on me, actually.”

Oof. They’re getting into that, huh? Alright. Sure. Jason is fine with this.

Hood raises her hand and says, “Ooh, me too. Definitely played a part.”

Nobody has anything to say to that. It’s not like they weren’t _aware;_ at least, not everyone from his universe. 

“I don’t really mind,” Robin says, staring at Bruce with big, earnest eyes. “It doesn’t upset me or anything! We get along fine! And it would be kind of weird if you adopted me anyway, cause I live with Damian, and—”

“You live with me?” Kid Damian snaps. He immediately turns to look at other Dick. “I live with you!”

“You live with me,” other Dick repeats, sounding kinda… kinda torn up, if anything. “Huh.”

 _“Huh,”_ Kid Damian repeats snidely, before turning away from other Dick with his jaw set. 

An uncomfortable silence descends over them all. Jason looks over to Robin, who has buried his face into Knight’s hair in an acknowledgement that he had started all of this. And exacerbated it greatly. 

Jason runs his fingers throug Robin’s hair and tries to be reassuring. It’s not _his_ fault, after all. He just apparently has the misfortune of being at the centre of several interpersonal issues for the family of this universe. Jason gets that.

He feels somebody watching him, and when he turns to look, he catches Bruce watching him and Robin with pained eyes. 

Yup. Jason really gets that.

He sighs and withdraws his hand from Robin’s hair with one last ruffle. Glancing over to Shadow, with the intention of wildly gesturing _do something to fix this,_ he finds Shadow watching other Dick. Who is watching Kid Damian. Who isn’t looking at anything at all. Right. No help on that front, then.

Jason feels like he’s about to crack and end up being the one to break the silence; sometimes being the proactive one doesn’t serve him well. Especially because he doesn’t know what to say to break this, exactly.

Before he can agonise over it though, somebody else takes up the mantle. Other Steph. That’s surpising.

Clapping her hands together, she says, “Wow, so. Patrol? Sun’s set.”

Patrol. Yeah. They can all agree on that. 

Slowly, the cave comes to life with murmurs of assent. Everybody kicks back into motion, now that they have something to do and a goal to achieve. Jason tries to send other Steph a grateful look, but she’s looking at other Dick: as it turns out, he’s also giving her a grateful look. Sure. As long as she’s getting some sort of appreciation.

Feeling the tension finally lift, Jason gives a long exhale. Patrol definitely isn’t going to magically fix all of the problems caused by this one conversation, but it will hopefully make them more manageable. At the very least, it’ll get certain people away from certain other people. 

Jason’s starting to think that Dick had been right earlier, when he mentioned wanting to meet their evil selves. A fight would’ve been _much_ more straightforward than this mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reverse!damian calls canon!damian bird in arabic! also [here](https://danishsweethearts.tumblr.com/post/615648411300052992/convo-btwn-reversedamian-and-canondamian-in) is their conversation in arabic! thnx for reading stay safe see u next week i promise i will not be late (dont hold me to that)
> 
> roll call:  
> everybody except canon!jason: in the cave (canon!steph and canon!cass arrive halfway)  
> canon!jason: ???????


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obligatory sorry this is late! also sorry this is a bit shorter than usual, it just felt like a Good Place To End It even tho i wanted to write some more. things are finally happening, lmao.

Eggplant Steph brings up patrol, and like that, the tension is banished. Truly a genius move. This family’s held together by the fact that they all share this one, solitary, really-not-that-effective coping mechanism; it’s no surprise to Steph that it’s the one thing that can break the ice. 

After that disaster of a conversation and a good chunk of awkward lurking, Bruce leaves to the changerooms to go suit up, which means that the band of anxiety and anger around her chest can finally loosen. 

As soon as he’s out of sight, she falls backwards onto the table she had been sitting on, groaning.

“Seconded,” Rook says dryly.

“Thirded,” Robin mumbles. 

“Guys,” Knight says. Now that she and Robin have finally separated, she’s commandeered an entire table to do warmup yoga on. Balancing herself on her forearms, she steadily lifts her body off of the table until she’s perpendicular to the floor. “You’re all overreacting,”

It’s very impressive that she manages to sound somewhat disapproving and overall calm while upside-down. The absolute showoff. 

“I’m not!” Robin protests. “You saw what happened! I said two sentences and made like, five different people sad. Five people, Knight! I’m not the one who makes people sad! I’m the happy one! The rest of you are the sad ones!”

“Hey,” Rook says, frowning. He’s probably the only person who can protest that and have an actual case.

Knight says, “This dimension has its own problems, and can deal with them themselves. I think.” She pauses. She tilts her head. “Either way, you shouldn’t worry,”

Robin huffs. “You should worry about how you aren’t keeping your knees together, maybe.” 

Knight gives him an unimpressed look, but she does press her legs together more.

Steph and Rook both hide a smile. 

Then, Steph senses as somebody approaches. Involuntarily, she tenses, and then tells herself that she’s being stupid almost immediately. The footsteps are too light to be Batman, and the shadow belongs to somebody with a much smaller stature, and it’s ridiculous that she’s this on edge when she hasn’t even _talked_ to the guy.

Grumpy Tim approaches. He had briefly left their group to go talk to Goth Cass, but he’s back now, mask on and cape swishing behind him. Wow, Steph’s so glad she grew out of capes.

“Hey,” Grumpy Tim says. Steph notes that he doesn’t look that grumpy at the moment, actually. Despite the eyemask, there’s a weird excitement to his expression.

They all greet him in return, and when he’s acknowledged them all, Grumpy Tim turns to Rook. 

“So,” he says, twisting his hands together. “Since we’ve got the all clear for patrol, I was wondering if you wanted to partner up?”

There’s a brief moment of silence. Rook looks at Steph, then Robin, then Knight. Grumpy Tim looks at Rook.

Rook turns back to Grumpy Tim, his eyes wide, and asks, “You want to team up with me?”

Grumpy Tim nods, and gives Rook a boyish, dorky grin. A _classic_ Timothy Drake expression. A pretty rare one, in Steph’s universe.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’d be cool.”

Rook stares for a bit more. Steph wonders if she’s going to need to smack him over the head or something to snap him out of it, but then he breaks into a grin as well: boyish and young and wow, Steph’s actually not comfortable with the emotions that seeing that expression makes her feel. 

Um. Moving on.

“Fuck yeah,” Rook says, now completely over whatever was holding him back at first. He puts out a fist. “It’s gonna be _so_ cool.”

Grumpy Timothy fistbumps him, looking vaguely delighted at the gesture. “Nice,” he says. “Cool. I was thinking we could do Tricorner and the Docks?”

Knight, now having returned to the same axis that everybody else is on, nudges Steph. She smiles. 

Steph rolls her eyes, but she smiles back.

 _Cute,_ Knight signs.

 _Yes,_ Steph returns. It’s all very cute that they’re getting along. Especially since the relationship between Rook and Oracle has historically been… rough. And Steph can’t imagine that the relationship between this universe’s Jason and Grumpy Tim is all that great either.

“Hell yeah,” Rook replies, hopping off of the table. “We’re gonna be living it up at Tricorner. Rook and…”

He trails off, and Grumpy Tim’s eyes widen.

“Oh, we never did introductions, huh?” he says. He snorts a laugh.

Once Steph thinks about it for more than a second, it is so deeply ridiculous that they all skipped the small talk and went straight for the exposing trauma, but then again. What had she expected? It’s very in character. 

“I’m Red Robin,” Grumpy Tim says.

“What?” Robin snaps at the same time Rook double-takes and goes “Dude, really?” and Knight covers her eyes with a hand and Steph thinks _jesus fucking christ._

“What?” Red Robin—it sounds even dumber when Steph has to think it in her own head—responds. He sounds defensive already. This is going to be a shitshow of a conversation.

“That’s just Robin with a colour in front of it!” Robin says. “It’s not even a new colour! Somebody has used that colour already!”

Rook looks askance at Red Robin.

 _Red Robin._ Yeah. Still sounds stupid as fuck. 

“Did you really just take one half of somebody else’s codename and one half of another’s and put them together and call it a day?” Rook asks.

Red Robin scowls. “I didn’t get it from Red Hood _or_ Robin. There’s personal significance, okay!”

“But you know how it sounds, right?” Rook asks. He’s apparently looped around from being shocked to being amused. “Like, you couldn’t have branched out a bit more?”

Red Robin stares at him, offended. “I— Look, I didn’t take up the name in good circumstances, and I didn’t have long to think about it. I just went with what worked, and it… stuck.”

“Unstick it,” Robin mutters, crossing his arms. Steph hides a laugh in Knight’s shoulder. Robin glares at her and kicks her in the knee anyway. 

There was once a time where everyone was afraid to even touch her. Steph wonders if she misses it.

Rook shakes his head. “Nah, dude. This isn’t gonna fly. You need a new name.” He pats Red Robin on the shoulder. “We’re gonna fix this,”

Red Robin frowns at Rook. “I can’t just change it,” he protests. He glances towards the hand on his shoulder, apparently unsure of what to make of it.

Rook waves his other hand. “Yes you can,” he says, “I do it all the time. We can brainstorm on the way to Tricorner.” 

“You _did_ have a different name the first time we met, didn’t you? I thought so,” Red Robin replies. He still seems a little confused at Rook’s familiarity, but he doesn’t look like a feral animal about to bolt, so Steph figures it’ll be fine. “What was it again?” Red Robin asks.

“Ares,” Rook says, grinning. “Good name, good times.” He removes his hand, but only so that he can wrap his arm around Red Robin’s shoulders instead. For a few seconds, as Rook pulls him closer, that bewildered, confused expresion returns to Red Robin’s face.

Then Steph watches, as Rook continues to chatter and lead Red Robin away from the rest of them, the expression smooth out. It turns into something that looks embarrassingly—at least for Red Robin—like hero worship. Steph and Knight look at each other, grinning. 

“—you want to keep the bird theme, you could be like, Drake or something,” Rook says, the sound of his voice slowly fading. “Get it? Like the duck, but also like your last name,” 

“What the fuck?” Red Robin replies. “That’s a terrible idea. Absolutely not.”

Together, they head towards the parking bay. Steph pretends the sight doesn’t warm the frozen cockles of her heart or however the fuck it is that the saying goes, but she fails.

“That is… disgustingly cute,” she says.

Robin huffs. _“Red Robin,”_ he repeats with a sneer. He curls his lip, and the expression is so eerily similar to Damian’s universal look of disgust and judgement that Steph can’t help her surprised laugh. It just makes Robin sulk harder.

Knight smiles. “They seem good for each other.”

“Rook does need more friends, doesn’t he?” Steph comments mildly. Knight can’t hide her laugh, so even when she gives Steph a half-hearted disapproving look, Steph isn’t deterred. 

“Don’t be mean,” Knight chides gently. She pauses, then gives Steph a sly look. “It’s not his fault he’s always running after Batman,”

Steph _whoops._ Fuck yes. It’s rare that Knight will join in on making fun of Batman. Hearing it even cheers Robin up, who sniggers into his hands as he looks in the direction that Rook had walked off in. 

Steph senses somebody else coming over. Not Batman either. Footsteps light, but assured. Stature smaller than Red Robin. Except when she looks, she sees Eggplant Steph _and_ Goth Cass. She hadn’t picked up on the latter’s approach at all. Damn. Alright.

“What’s all the commotion here?” Eggplant Steph asks, pulling Goth Cass along behind her.

Knight gives them both a smile. “Nothing interesting,” she says airily, setting Robin off into another fit of giggles.

Eggplant Steph raises an eyebrow. “If you say so,” she says with a shrug. “Anyway, we were wondering if you guys wanted to team up for patrol tonight! We as in Batgirl here,” and she jazz-hands in Goth Cass’ direction, “and me, Spoiler!”

“Hey,” Steph says, “I did the Spoiler thing too. Cool.”

“Cool,” Spoiler agrees. Steph wonders where the purple came from. In her universe, the Spoiler costume had been a very smart black with navy accents. Then again, Steph’s noticed that barring Batgirl, everybody’s costumes here seem to be more colourful than the ones in her universe. Before Robin, all of them had stuck to the monochrome. The first person to change that had been Steph, actually, but hers is all symbolic and meaningful. And is still mostly black.

Speaking of Batgirl, she glides over to Steph; at least, that’s how Steph can best describe the way she moves. It’s soundless, with the easy grace of a shadow. Even when she’s at her stealthiest, Knight has always had some sort of presence about her. Something leftover from being raised alongside Damian, most likely. A strange, self-aware haughtiness.

Batgirl has none of that. She appears beside Steph, and cocks her head. 

It’s like looking at a stranger wearing Knight’s face. 

“Do you kill people?” says Batgirl, and, okay, wow. Wow.

Wow.

“Wow,” Steph says. She turns and looks around the rest of the cave, raising her voice. “Does anybody else here want to patrol with me?”

Spoiler bursts into noise at the same time that Knight starts saying something and Robin begins to protest, but a voice cuts above all of that.

“I do.”

Steph looks around wildly for the source of the words, and finds…

Damian. Tiny Damian. Robin Damian. He somehow made his way over from the computer—Steph’s getting real tired of being sneaked up on—and is now staring up at her.

“You... do?” Steph asks.

“I do,” he replies with a firm nod. “If you are willing.”

“Um,” she replies. She looks at Shadow and Adult Dick, who are staring in mild, curious surprise at Damian. She looks back towards Batgirl and Spoiler, who are both staring in less mild, more confused surprise between her and Damian.

She looks back at the kid. Jesus. That’s an _intense_ Damian Wayne-Al Ghul stare right there; she feels like she’s being scrutinized by both Bruce and Talia at the same time. Terrifying. 

“I mean, I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of this,” she starts, “but yes. Sure. Let’s patrol together.”

Damian nods, a pleased glint in his eye. It's so odd seeing him in the Robin colours, even if the costume designs are different. 

“Excellent,” he says primly. He turns towards the outside entrance, and as he does, he glances in the direction of the computer. Or, more specifically, at the people standing by the computer.

Ah. Steph gets it now. _Ahhh._ Yeah, she's fine with this. Very astute of Damian to have realized that Steph's the person to go to for spiteful, rebellious gestures. She's impressed.

“Let’s be on our way, Brown.”

Steph raises an eyebrow at the kid. Last names? Oh, no. Not happening. Even hearing Shadow call her Stephanie all the time had been an adjustment when they first met.

“That’s Red Hood in the field to you, punk,” she says, standing up and cracking her knuckles. She wonders whether she can risk ruffling his hair. It looks so stupid, gelled up like that. Practically _asking_ to be messed up. “Learn to respect your elders.”

Damian huffs, but he doesn’t look too annoyed. Steph reckons that by the time the night is done she’ll have gained hair ruffling privileges. Damian is so _easy_ to read, when it gets down to it. Or maybe she just knows him well. Regardless of universal differences.

Behind them, Robin—Dick Robin, god this is going to get confusing—shouts, “Wait, let me come with you!”

Steph and Damian both stop and look at each other. Steph raises an eyebrow at the kid.

He scrunches up his nose. Steph can’t believe that she actually finds the expression cute when it’s on a thirteen-year-old’s face. He mutters, “I suppose.”

“Get over here, Rob,” Steph calls. Robin scrambles off of the table, whooping. He bounds over towards Damian immediately, a grin on his face that spells trouble.

“Sup, Dami,” he says. “I still can’t believe you stole my hero name. And my costume.”

Steph snorts. God, she loves that little asshole.

Damian scowls, looking like he’s seconds away from hissing at Robin like a cat. “I believe you will find that I improved both the name and the costume. Be grateful.”

Robin raises a single, judgemental eyebrow at Damian. “You should be grateful that I’m not kicking your ass for that, Dami. What happened to respecting your elders?”

Steph wonders if she should intervene. Other people probably would, but she wonders if the bickering might be good for them. Who can say. After all, she used to argue with Shadow on patrol all the time, and look where that got them!

Actually, maybe she _should_ intervene.

Before she can try and enact her vague knowledge on wrangling children, a blur of purple moves past her.

Spoiler, apparently in the same mind as Steph—unsurprising, really—places a hand on both Damian and Robin’s shoulders. 

“I’m coming too!” she says. It’s very impressive how she manages to sound upbeat about it while also working in an implicit threat. She looks back at Steph.

Steph gives her a thumbs up. “No complaints here,” she says. 

Damian scowls at Spoiler and pulls away from her touch. He doesn’t protest any more than that, though.

Robin, because he’s a paragon of maturity and class, pokes his tongue out at Damian. Damian scowls back. They both stalk off, muttering at each other.

Steph and Spoiler meet each other’s gazes and smile.

“Let’s go, Steph and Steph and the Robins,” Spoiler says. She offers out a hand for a high-five.

Steph grins and high-fives her back. “Great band name,” she says, pulling out her eyemask and smoothing it on. “I dibs lead guitar.”

“Can you actually play guitar?” Spoiler asks. She sounds so genuinely delighted that Steph wants to lie and say yes.

“Absolutely not,” she chirps. Spoiler laughs.

Ahead of them, Damian and Robin turn back and shout, impatiently, _“Hurry up!”_

Yeah, alright. Steph’s pretty sure this is gonna be fun. She doesn’t want to lock it in yet, in case she jinxes it, but she’s got a pretty good feeling about this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wooo we're finally out of the cave! not all of the teams were covered but they've all officially been formed! onwards to our roll call!
> 
> ROLL CALL:  
> team 'chaperoned playdate' - reverse!steph, canon!steph, reverse!dick and canon!damian: the narrows/the hill/otisburg  
> team 'middle kids' OR team 'wish fulfilment' - reverse!jason, canon!tim: tricorner/the docks  
> team 'eldest' OR team 'the author's obvious favourites to write' - reverse!damian, canon!dick: robbinsville/the bowery  
> team 'bruce picked this one to tag along on because he thought it would be the least challenging for him personally but boy is he in for a surprise': reverse!cass, reverse!tim, bruce, canon!cass - upper east/robinson park  
> canon!jason: ?????
> 
> i had to look at a map of gotham for this and i actually just picked places out at random so dont think too much about it. thnx for reading! stay safe! i got a [tumblr](https://danishsweethearts.tumblr.com/)


	6. Interlude I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who guess who guess who!

He hears the telltale signs of his comm flickering to life as he parks his motorcycle. Rolling his eyes, he pushes the bike into the secluded corner he's picked, hoping that nobody fucks with it. Most people in this area are aware that it’s his property, but sometimes vigilante branding doesn't trump sheer desperation. He would know.

Despite the fact that his comm clearly is on, there's no sound from the other end. Just the vaguely threatening static of an open channel.

Even though she can't see his face, he rolls his eyes again.

"You know," he drawls, "I worked very hard programming that virtual do-not-disturb setting. Rather rude of you to ignore it, O. I’m pretty sure you were raised better than that,"

“Do you want me to code you a better one, Hood? Because yours, I could’ve done while I was asleep,” Oracle replies. She doesn’t sound panicked, or pissed, or even smug, which rules out the main three reasons Oracle would ever contact him: some brat needing a pickup, a lecture about his behaviour, or information for a case that he hasn’t cracked yet.

“Thanks for the offer, but no thanks,” he replies. He checks his guns one last time. Working order, if in need of a polish. He’s not expecting a particularly difficult patrol, so he’ll probably have time to clean them before crashing for the night. 

Brief check of the rest of his equipment doesn’t return any issues, which means he’s all good to head out properly. The fact that Oracle hasn’t said anything else in this time means that there really isn’t anything pressing at hand, but that does leave Jason wondering what she could possibly want. 

Sighing, he asks, “What brings you invading my privacy, anyhow?”

Oracle  _ hmms. _ “You haven’t checked the family group chat today,” she states, which is not what Jason had been expecting her to bring up.

“I’m affronted by both the fact that that group chat exists and that I’m in it, if I haven’t made that clear, so no. I haven’t checked it.” He hates where this is going. He hates that he’s curious now. 

Somewhere, a fire alarm starts going off. Ah, Gotham. Jason figures it’s as good a starting point as any.

Oracle  _ hmms _ again. Jason doesn’t like how much time she’s dedicating to thinking about what she says. That implies a level of complication and mess that he just does not want to deal with tonight. Not when he’s got some therapeutic, soothing equipment maintenance waiting for him at the end of the night.

“You should check it,” she says. 

“I’m not going to check it,” Jason replies, trying to keep the growl out of his voice.  _ This is a normal conversation, _ he tells his brain.  _ Please be normal. Thank you.  _ “I don’t bring my phone on patrol, anyway.”

“I could program it to pop up on your visor screen if you want. It’d take me like, two minutes.” Oracle says.

Jason looks around for whichever camera is closest to him. On a building on his left, he sees a blink of red. 

“From the bottom of my heart,” he says, putting a hand over his chest and looking straight at the camera, “I could not think of anything worse than having the bad memes that Red Robin spams the chat with pop up in front of my eyes,”

Oracle snorts. “Some of them are pretty funny,”

“No,” Jason replies, shaking his head, “none of them are. He has the sense of humour of a ten year old.”

“That tracks, considering who his friends are,” Oracle says airily.

Jason can’t help the laugh that escapes him at that. Goddamnit. She’s got him acting all familiar and buddy-buddy. 

At least the helmet hides his smile. He shakes his head again.

“Look, not that I’m not enjoying making fun of the Replacement, but did you really just hack into my channel to tell me to check the group chat?” he asks. 

“Pretty much.”

“It’s just,” Jason says, “you usually contact me for... important things.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s not important,” Oracle says, considering.

Cryptic. Even worse that this is essentially the median communication skill level of everyone in Gotham. And people wonder why he likes to work alone. 

“So it’s not  _ not  _ important, but it’s also not important enough that you won’t tell me now?”

Oracle makes a sound of agreement. “I just want to guarantee the full satisfaction of the smug  _ I told you so _ I can give you afterwards, when you inevitably don't check it,” she says.

Jason pauses and takes measure of himself. He comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t care enough to be angry about this. The anger's there, but the effort of summoning it and then repressing it seems a bit much for a conversation about a chat that he's had muted for several months. In the process, he also realizes that he can’t be bothered pursuing it any further either. 

The situation doesn’t seem that dire. If it’s something to do with the chat, then it’s probably like, him missing the news of a surprise birthday party they’re throwing for Dick or something. That seems like the kind of shit Oracle would feel the need to taunt him about.

Yeah, he’ll learn to live with the guilt somehow. Drop off a present at the guy’s apartment, or something. 

“Well, good talk, O,” he says, pleased with how calm he sounds. “Much appreciated. I promise to receive your smug _I told you so_ with indignance and scorn.”

“Always here to please,” Oracle replies. “Stay safe out there, Hood.”

“It’s Gotham,” he replies dryly, and the last thing he hears before the connection cuts off is Oracle’s amused snort.

Well, that’s that. He supposes he’ll give the stupid group chat a skim when he gets home. For now, he has more important things to worry about. 

Rolling his shoulders, he steps out to see what Crime Alley has in store for him tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> felt bad about how short last chapter was, would feel bad if this was the only thing i posted for next week's chapter, here's an interlude, have fun. update should still be the same time next week!
> 
> do me a favour and let's all pretend i know how to write jason and/or babs. stay safe see yall


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's still wednesday somewhere, probably. anw team "the author's obvious favourites to write" living up to their name, featuring my weird pretentious way of writing action to make up for the fact that i cannot write action

Damian sends out his grapple and hears it hit true; swinging, or soaring, he takes off, pushing through the sky to his destination. It is a steady and familiar rhythm, as he feels the click of his grapple securing and the twang of his rope pulling taut, and the snap of the wind around him. 

This may not be his Gotham, but it is familiar enough that he can navigate regardless. 

Furthermore, even if he did not have his bearings, there is no way to miss the flash of blue that preceeds him. Damian cuts through the air like a knife but Nightwing _flies,_ twisting through the night as if he is untouched by gravity.

Damian has seen Robin on the trapeze and with a grappling hook many times. The lightness and exuberance of the way he travels the air does not leave him in adulthood, it seems. 

When they finally get to the edges of Robbinsville, Nightwing lands on a rooftop, coming out of a rather intricate looking flip-twist that he had pulled at the peak of his swing.

Damian lands beside him a second later. Without the flips.

When he straightens his posture, Nightwing is grinning at him.

“Good keeping up,” he says, placing a hand on one hip. 

Part of his hair has fallen across his eyemask. Does he not gel it? If this was Robin, Damian would have no qualms with rolling his eyes and pushing back the wayward strands, but this is.. Nightwing. A grown man. Not his little brother.

Again, he repeats the sentiment: _this is weird._

“I am hardly a rookie,” Damian replies.

Nightwing huffs a laugh. “You know, I’m the fastest one in the family in this universe. I can outpace any of them.”

“Were you trying to outpace me?” Damian inquires.

“Hardly,” Nightwing replies, grinning. “Just testing the waters.”

Damian raises an eyebrow in polite doubt at that. Nightwing’s grin turns cheeky, and he suddenly looks so strikingly familiar to the chirpy and bright fourteen-year-old that Damian knows and loves that he has to look away.

“Shall we go?” Damian asks, staring into the skyline. Gotham greets him, like it always does, with the open arms of a relative who no longer recognizes him. Or maybe—and much more likely—he is simply getting maudlin.

He rolls his shoulders. 

Next to him, Nightwing points his grapple. “Onward and upward?” he suggests. 

Damian tilts his head. “I seem to remember you being better at catchphrases than that,” he says, a smile already half-formed on his face. “Or maybe you lose that particular talent as you get older?”

“Ha,” Nightwing says, grinning. “You called it a talent. I’m counting this as a win.”

Before Damian can reply, Nightwing pulls the trigger on his grapple and is off, pulled into the sky laughing. He is in no position to be looking back at Damian, so Damian allows himself the fond grin that he would otherwise have to hide.

He soon follows suit, point-shoot-pull, swinging from rooftop to rooftop and keeping his eyes on the ground below. Staying close to the shadows. Keeping his steps light. 

Somebody pulls a gun in a barfight. Damian blinks, sees the flash of steel, changes his course and lands on the ground. Feet light. Still in the shadows. He is here to make an entrance, after all.

The Shadow costume is black and dark grey and black and then black again and in it, Damian has learned to live with going unnoticed, has learned to appreciate being unseen. However, when he sees the flash of blue in the shadows and then hears the gun clatter to the ground, he has to admit it. It is... striking.

“Now, now, boys,” Nightwing says as he melts out of the darkness. “Let’s play nice, hm?”

His back is to the wall. Angled slightly, so that he has line of sight on all five of the aspiring combatants. Feet surprisingly _not_ planted. Damian’s—and Batman’s, and most of his family’s—preferred method of intimidation is squaring his shoulders and locking his stance. Looking immovable. Indomitable. 

Nightwing, in contrast, poises himself like he’s caught in motion: a snaked coiled and ready to strike, or an owl beginning its descent with claws outstretched. Interesting. 

Damian takes note. He has heard enough of Richard complaining that criminals are never scared of him like they are of Damian.

“Nightwing?” one of the men hisses. “This ain’t your city,”

Nightwing cocks his head. “What? You’d rather Batman?” 

As he says it, his gaze slides over to where Damian is standing.

Oh. Oh, no. Damian has a cape. Damian has the shadows around him. 

Damian watches the corner of Nightwing’s mouth turn up, and does not know whether he wants to roll his eyes or laugh. 

Without looking, Nightwing kicks the gun towards Damian. Damian almost misses it, but he lashes out with a foot and stops the gun in its movement. The sound of steel scraping on gravel echoes throughout the alley.

Voice dropping into a growl that is, at this point, too familiar, he says, “You called?”

Realistically, the presence of Nightwing should have been enough to turn away the men, but there is no person in Gotham foolish enough to take on Nightwing and Batman in tandem. Five pairs of eyes widen as they turn to stare at the shadows where Damian stands.

They scatter. Damian sees Nightwing duck his head to hide a smile.

When the scene has cleared, Damian leans down to pick up the gun. It is a cheap, primitive thing. He scoffs.

Nightwing walks closer, grinning. “Sorry about that,” he says. “I just didn’t want it to turn violent. They were drunk and stupid, not but actually antagonistic.”

“Do it again, and I will leave you to fend for yourself,” Damian huffs. He must sound more peeved than he had meant to, because Nightwing shoots him a glance that seems a little too knowing. Damian clears his throat. “Doing that voice always hurts my vocal chords.”

Taking the peace offering, Nightwing lets his expression lighten into a smile. “I don’t know how B does it.”

Damian clicks the safety on, and offers Nightwing the gun. His offer is returned with a shake of the head however, and Nightwing turns up his palms.

“Hold onto that for me, will you? If B catches sight of me with a gun, he’ll probably have a heart attack.”

Damian raises his eyebrows. “Now you can push the scrutiny onto me,” he remarks, but he clips the gun to his belt regardless. 

Nightwing chuckles. “It’s no fun when you figure out my evil plan, y’know,”

Damian smiles. Nightwing smiles in return. The night goes on. 

There are fights and muggings, but Robbinsville manages to behave itself for the most part; it is hardly the most taxing patrol. In general, it is a spectacular night, by the standards of Gotham. Damian can feel the calm of moonlight all around them, and it seems that most of the city has surrendered into sleep, where it would normally fight the descent claw and teeth.

In other words, a quiet night.

They confiscate some contrabrand and alert the police, retreating to a skyscraper nearby to watch the proceedings in case something goes wrong. It provides a decent view of Gotham, or of what the fog does not obscure.

“I wonder how the others are doing,” Nightwing says, squinting in the vague direction of Arkham Asylum. 

“I do not think there is cause for concern,” Damian says. The only group that would give him pause is the two Stephs and the two Robins, but even then, he trusts Stephanie. Probably. To some degree. Not to mention, Spoiler is there as well, and Damian had been given the impression that she was competent enough. There is probably nothing to worry about.

Nightwing makes a sound of agreement. “Probably not. As long as the kids aren’t tearing each other apart over the Robin thing,”

Damian clicks his tongue. “I should hope not. Forgive me for saying, but the entire situation surrounding Robin seems… convoluted,”

“You’re telling me,” Nightwing snorts, shaking his head. He looks sidelong at Damian. “I guess you know where it comes from then?”

Damian nods. He thinks he can see an echo of pain in Nightwing’s expression, but Damian has no real way to smooth it out. It is not his place. It does not sit well with him, regardless.

“I do,” he replies. “I am… sorry.” The words are terribly lacking considering the gravity of all that they refer to.

Nightwing shrugs. “You didn’t have anything to do with it,” he says, waving a hand. “And, I mean, it’s nice to know that in some other dimension things turned out differently.”

Damian nods. “Believe me. It will not be happening under my watch.” He offers Nightwing a smile. “Frankly, even seeing my younger self in the Robin colours makes me want to hit him over the head a little.”

Nightwing laughs. “Nah, he’s fine,” he says, his smile softening. “He’s actually the only one I passed Robin onto, so to speak. Not that I didn’t do it with the other Robins, but... Ah, it's complicated. I'll just say that with Damian... I chose him. I chose him for Robin, with the full knowledge of the mantle behind that choice.”

He smiles at Damian, something sappy and fond and proud, and seeing it feels like fingers pressing into a bruise; Damian’s heart is sore and tender and altogether too full.

He looks away, a smile on his own face. “Names in the field,” he corrects gently, and Nightwing snorts in response.

Damian had not been an easy child to deal with. Angry. Arrogant. Incorrigbly scornful. His father had not known what to do with him at first, and it had taken months before Damian was allowed near a weapon of any sort. And that was only in his universe, where the circumstances of Damian coming to live with his father were most likely much simpler than those in this universe.

Yet, Nightwing had given his alternate self Robin regardless of the troubles that Damian cannot name but can surely imagine. It had not even happened to him, but Damian feels unspeakably touched.

“You know, you look a little like you’re going to cry,” Nightwing says, grinning. 

“I am not going to cry,” Damian snaps back. He shakes himself out of the bout of sentimentality. “I am just... touched.” He pauses. Looks at Nightwing, and sees in his slightly embarrassed-fond-gentle expression that he understands. “It was kind of you.”

 _Kind_ does not begin to cover the oceans of meaning in that gesture, but Damian refuses to drop to any lower depths of mawkishness.

“Well,” Nightwing says, “he— you— are my brother.”

Behind the word _brother_ lies yet another ocean of meaning, but they are both content to leave it unspoken. 

They finish looping around the outskirts of the area on the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse. The kind that probably constantly witnesses fights, or contraband trades, or other illicit activities; tonight, it is silent.

“Shall we head into the inner suburbs?” Nightwing asks. Damian nods. Inner suburbs means more people, thus trading the natural inclination that people have to do illegal things in quieter, emptier areas with the higher chance of unsavoury incidents happening in a more densely populated place.

They are both ready to set off again, their destination in mind and the wind on their side, when something truly, genuinely remarkable happens.

Damian’s phone starts to ring.

He knows that it is his phone, because two months ago Timothy set his ringtone to some K-pop song and refused to let Damian change it back. Nightwing looks at him.

“Is that… you?”

“Yes,” Damian says, deciding that playing it off with a straight face is his best bet. “That is my phone ringtone.”

“There are _so_ many things confusing me about this situation.”

Damian cannot help but agree. He pulls his phone out of his belt and tries his best not to stare at it in too obvious disbelief. The song continues playing.

It is a video call. It is from… his… mother?

He picks up.

His mother’s stern visage fills the screen. She is wearing a full face of makeup. _Hm._

 _“Shadow,”_ she says, frowning into the camera. _“I see you’re alive,”_

“Mother,” Damian says slowly, ignoring Nightwing’s choked _Talia?_ in the background. “How are you… reaching… me..?”

His mother gives a curt little huff, communicating to Damian that she is rather irritated by something. Lovely. He mentally prepares himself for the conversation.

_“I was in America for business, and I figured it would be a good time to visit you. However, when I got to your apartment in Gotham, I was accosted by some lab-coat wearing freak claiming he was holding you hostage in another dimension. He offered me a five minute phone call with you to confirm it, so. Here I am.”_

“He goes by Doctor Archimedes,” Damian says, because that is the only part of what his mother just said that he feels comfortable commenting on. Not only is his mother in America for business, which never bodes well, his apartment in Gotham has apparently been compromised. Furthermore, Archimedes’ powers apparently extend to phone service. It is… a lot to take in.

“His name is _Doctor Archimedes?_ ” Nightwing asks, looking delighted.

Absentmindedly, Damian replies, “Yes. His full name is Archimedes Jones, I believe.”

“It’s his _given name?”_ Nightwing gasps, as his mother says, _“Who is that?”_

Oh, of course. How rude. He had forgotten introductions. Damian turns the camera so that Nightwing is in shot as well. 

He says, “Archimedes was not lying. I _am_ in another dimension. One where the ages of me and my siblings have all been reversed. Mother, this is alternate Richard. Otherwise known as Nightwing.”

His mother squints at the camera. _“Are you saying that’s the little brat?”_ she says.

“Mother,” Damian chides. 

Nightwing waves at the camera. “Hi, Talia,” he chirps. His mother further narrows her eyes.

 _“You got dropped into another dimension and immediately found a version of Richard to spend time with,”_ she says dryly. _“Unsurprising.”_

Damian decides that this is the point where he should remove Nightwing and his mother from each other’s sight, so he turns away again. Mother’s expression becomes a little less vaguely annoyed, but still not enough that he feels as though he is in the clear.

“So,” he says, steering the conversation away and trying not to laugh at how Nightwing is poking his tongue out at the phone, “are there terms for my return as hostage?”

His mother scowls. _“Yes,”_ she says. _“He will bring you and your partners back for an egregious sum of money.”_

“Is that it?” Damian asks, surprised. That is… quite reasonable, honestly. Hardly out of the question for Damian, or his mother, or even his father, should they bring him into the picture.

His mother rolls her eyes. _“Oh, slipped my mind. And he wants Batman’s identity,”_ she continues. 

There it is. Damian resists the urge to rub his temples. 

“He wants Batman’s identity? Not mine?” Damian asks. None of the situation has clarified in the few minutes he and his mother have been talking, and Damian is starting to suspect that five minutes may not be enough time to so much as scratch the surface.

His mother scoffs. _“Batman’s identity, not yours. It appears your own supervillain has forsaken you, son.”_

Nightwing makes a choked noise. Again, Damian has to hide a smile.

“Batman can have Archimedes,” he replies dryly. “I certainly don’t want him.”

“Can I have him?” Nightwing asks, trying to look at the phone screen without being in shot. “He sounds amazing,”

 _“Does he need to be here for this?”_ his mother asks. _“He’s distracting you,”_

“I am not distracted,” Damian says, as Nightwing says, “Do you think she’ll get me his autograph if I ask nicely?”

Damian disguses his laugh as a cough, but he suspects his mother is not convinced.

Pursing her lips, she says, _“Returning to the point. What exactly do you want me to do now?”_

“I suppose it would be too much to ask you to meet his terms,” Damian sighs. His mother narrows her eyes.

 _“I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously. Is being indefinitely trapped in another dimension_ not _of concern to you?”_ she asks tersely.

“Honestly, I was considering just leaving it be and seeing how long it takes Father to notice we are gone,” he replies dryly. His mother may try to hide it, but he sees the smile that passes over her face. He raises an eyebrow at her in knowing judgement.

She snorts. _“Yes, yes, you’re hilarious,”_ she deadpans, shaking her head. _“However, I would like you back in this dimension as soon as possible.”_

Behind the phone, Nightwing taps his wrist. “We’re on the clock, Shadow,” he teases. “Taking personal phone calls is not a good look,”

His mother rolls her eyes. _“What do you normally do when going up against this Archimedes? Surely you have dealt with this before.”_

Damian shrugs. “He is fairly reoccuring, but our usual protocol is _don’t get hit._ None of my team have ever been affected by his powers before.”

His mother frowns. _“Impressive, but not very useful in this situation. What, then, do you propose I do?”_

Damian, having kept track of the minutes as best as he could, knows that their time is fast running out. He tilts his head, affecting consideration.

“I don’t know, Mother,” he says. A minute and twelve seconds. Eleven. Ten. Nine. “I suppose you could contact Father. He usually has some sort of contingencies for moments like this.”

 _“Contact your Fath—”_ his mother chokes, just before Damian hangs up the call. Exactly one minute of time left. Excellently timed.

As soon as he lowers the phone, Nightwing bursts into laughter.

“Oh my god,” he wheezes, “you said _contact B_ to her face—” and then he falls into another fit of laughter. Damian grins, wicked and pleased and feeling altogether light.

“It was not to her face,” he says. “Let’s not be inaccurate.”

Nightwing laughs harder, the sound ringing out and chasing away any theoretical stealth they might have had prior. 

Damian laughs too.

Sometimes it is difficult to remember that doing this, the vigilantism and the mission, is not all tension and dread and despair. The anger that Damian feels will always drive him towards justice and righteousness, but moments like this, clear laughter on a relatively clear night, or sincere gratitude from civilians, or icecream after patrol, keep his steps light.

When they have both reached some measure of composure, Nightwing stretches out his arms towards the sky and exhales.

He looks over towards Damian. “Come on, then. Let’s finish up here quickly.”

Damian tilts his head in question. “You have somewhere better to be, Nightwing?” he asks, smirking.

Nightwing snorts. “Ideally, _we_ have somewhere better to be. Not that pretty much anywhere isn’t better than patrolling in Gotham.”

“Oh?” Damian asks, raising an eyebrow.

Nightwing grins. “Say, how’s your agility and balance?”

“Impeccable,” Damian responds, sharp and anticipatory.

“Great,” Nightwing says. “Let’s finish the inner loop, and then meet me at the train station on the corner of Seventh and Rose.”

Damian grins. “A race?” he asks.

“Only if you’re prepared to lose,” Nightwing shoots back.

Well. They cannot have _that_ kind of attitude. Damian rolls his shoulders. Points his grapple.

“You’re on,” he says, and then they are both off: point-shoot-pull, racing into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i typed out an essay about damian and talia and the relationship between first gen immigrant kids and their estranged (literally and emotionally) parents and about filial duty and intergenerational trauma, right, and then i was like. this is an authors note. i'm being ridiculous. so i deleted it. but just know i'm always inarticulately yelling about damian and talia internally.
> 
> the relationship btwn dick and talia in reverse!verse is the same "petty vaguely competitive in-laws" one as it is in canon except dick is a kid, so it's just like [talia al ghul voice] nearly threw hands with a 13 year old


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [squints] is that- is that a fucking plot? how did that get in here? oh my god, somebody call security, what the fuck

There’s really nothing in the world like the adrenaline of racing through Gotham by grapple.

It’s good to get out of the Batcave. It’s a weirdly nice night out, and while Tim is usually hesitant to call the outside air in Gotham anything resembling fresh, it is somewhat more invigorating than usual. He thinks he can even see a star, if he squints. 

It’s also good to get out of the Batcave because it means getting away from the people in it. Not that Tim had that many problems with—uh, most of—the people in it individually, but as a group? Nightmare fuel. If there exists an upper cap on how much awkwardness can fit into a series of conversations, they definitely came close to it. _Very_ quite close. Tim considers himself a pretty rational person, but he swears he could feel the hand of divine intervention hovering just over their heads, waiting to see if the situation got any worse.

He and Rook land on a roof near the edges of the port district. Not quite at their destination yet, but Tim doesn’t mind a break.

Rook groans, stretching out his arms towards the sky.

“Man, that was an unfettered shitshow,” he says. He throws a grin in Tim’s direction.

Tim is still trying to get used to a Jason who actively likes him and wants to chat with him, but he manages a smile in return. It’s probably a little too enthusiastic, but whatever. He’s fucking elated. So what. He knows that it’s not his universe’s Jason, but that might make it better in some ways; Tim respects and has come to terms with the fact that he and Red Hood are never going to have a very typical brotherly connection. He’s not going to push it, and honestly, all his half-abandoned childhood dreams of running around the rooftopss with Robin-Jason were pretty soured by the murder attempt.

With Rook, he doesn’t need to factor any of that in.

“Bats and their dramatics,” he replies, with an exaggerated shake of his head. 

Rook laughs. “Careful, Red. I hear the walls in the Manor are made out of glass,”

Tim rolls his eyes. “I don’t live in the Manor,” he says, which isn’t really the point. Once a child raised under the hand of the man who dresses up as a bat to fight crime and protect people, always a child raised under the hand of the man who dresses up as a bat to fight crime and protect people. He’s not about to deny it. 

Though, he’s not that bad compared to other members of the family. Like Rook’s alternate version, for example. Tim’s pretty sure he’s jumping over that very low bar.

Rook nods consideringly. “Neither,” he says. He puts out his hand for a high-five. 

He’s very tactile. Tim wonders if Red Hood is tactile. It’s not like Tim—or anybody, really, except maybe Nightwing—is volunteering to find out, but it’s interesting to think about. 

Tim high-fives Rook back. “Come on,” he says, nodding towards the lights of the docks. “Let’s go.”

A few more minutes of travel, and they’re officially at _pointé à blanc._ Tim can smell the vaguely rancid seawater, and hear the unsteady crash and pull of the waves. They’re crouched on the rooftop of some warehouse, scanning the area. 

“Alright,” Rook says. He pulls something out of his belt and clicks it on. 

Tim sends him a questioning look, but lets Rook continue on without protest. For now, at least.

“Testing, testing, 1-2-3,” Rook says into the... recorder? It plays back his voice, the audio quality seamless. He grins at Tim.

Tim raises an eyebrow. Everyone here has recording software built into their suits now, after he and Oracle had worked out a way of storing the audio information back in the Clocktower servers, but he guesses the old-school device is pretty fun. 

“Am I being interviewed?” Tim asks dryly. “Cause, I usually need to sign media releases and stuff for this.”

Rook rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he says, bumping Tim in the shoulder. “This is to record the process of finding you a new name because Red Robin sucks, otherwise known as Operation FYANNBRRS.”

“Wordy,” Tim comments. “I hope you’re better at hero names than you are at operation names.”

“Suggestion one: Killjoy,” Rook says into the recorder. Tim hates that he thinks it sounds a _little_ bit cool. Maybe if he was a villain. God. That’d be a pretty great villain name, actually.

He says, “That makes me sound like I’m evil.” He peers at the entrance of the warehouse opposite them through his binoculars. “I think that warehouse is unlocked.”

Rook smiles. “Keep it in the back pocket if you ever feel like going off the rails,” he says, before pulling out his own binoculars. He looks. “Definitely unlocked. Are we worried?”

Tim shrugs, putting away his binoculars and rising out of his crouch. He slides along the edge of the rooftop until he’s at a pretty good vantage point, trying to see through one of the windows of the other warehouse. It’s dark inside, but that doesn’t mean anything. Tim can name three different crime factions off the top of his head with easy access to night-vision tech. Not to mention offices and hidden rooms and such.

“I think it’s worth a look,” he says. He’s already looking around the area, trying to figure out the best way to make their way across: grappling won’t work at such a short distance, but there’s still a good amount of space between this rooftop and the next, so jumping’s risky. Also too loud. Next option. 

Going to ground level could work, but it’d make them much more visible, and they’d have to find their way back up unless they planned on waltzing through the front door. Looping around the back might work better, but realistically, anybody doing nefarious things would be prepared for tha—

Rook rolls his shoulders and takes a few steps back. With a running start, he launches himself off of the edge of the rooftop.

Eyes wide, Tim watches as Rook barely— _barely_ —makes the jump. His hands just manage to find purchase on the edge of the other roof and when his feet slam into the side of the warehouse, Tim’s ready to flinch at the impact.

What comes instead is a very light _thud._ Tim doesn’t drop his jaw, but it’s close.

Rook pulls himself up onto the other roof, then brushes off his hands and knees. He looks over to Tim. 

He stares for a while, then he taps his comm.

 _“What are you still doing over there?”_ Rook asks.

“How did you not make a louder noise?” Tim shoots back. He examines the distance critically. Alright, he thinks he could make the jump, but there’s no way in hell he can be as quiet about landing as Rook was. 

Rook cocks his head. _“I have sound absorbing tech in my boots. Do you guys not have that?”_

Tim huffs. “We have suits that can record audio without a physical recorder,” he mutters. Then he says, “No. We don’t have those.”

 _“Recorders integrated into the suits,”_ Rook says, nodding. _“That’s a pretty good idea. Who came up with that?”_

“Oracle and I did,” Tim replies. He snorts despite himself. The Oracle situation over there just never fails to amuse.

 _“Right. Miss I’m-going-to-revolutionize-the-justice-system,”_ Rook says, chuckling. Tim can see his grin from here. Rook kicks out a foot. _“One of Shadow’s partners made the sound tech. It’s ridiculously useful.”_

Shadow has partners? Tim bites back the many mean comments he could make in reply to that. Rook doesn’t know any of the context around Tim and Damian’s animosity, and more than that, the alternate version of Damian actually seems like pretty decent guy and doesn’t deserve Tim’s scorn. Mostly, this just confirms Tim’s deep fears that he and Damian are going to reach some sort of understanding one day, which will then evolve into mutual respect and love, and then Tim will have to deal with Nightwing being emotional and smug _all_ the time.

Oh, the horrors the future surely held. Tim can’t bear to think about it.

He looks down at his boots in sorrow. “Remind me to bother you for details on the tech later,” he says, before sighing and dropping down to the ground. His boots thud as he makes contact with the packed dirt, and he can hear Rook snickering over the comm. He rolls his eyes.

Rook says, _“By the way, Shadow’s partner is named Phoenix. Which is a pretty cool name, if it hasn’t already been taken here. Keeps with the bird theme as well.”_

Phoenix. Not bad. Tim inclines his head in thought. He continues.

There’s a few shipping crates nearby, so he’s not all out in the open, but making his way across the walkway still sets him on edge. 

He replies, “I’ll have to check, but it’s… pretty good. Put it down as a maybe. Though I’m not all that attached to the bird theme, for future reference.”

 _“Noted,”_ Rook murmurs. _“Watch out. Your belt is catching the light a little.”_

Tim huffs. The streetlights here are half blown-out. He does pull his cape over himself a little more, just to make sure. Ugh, he can’t believe he has to take the ground level route. 

It does enable him to get a good look at the path, however. As he stalks towards the warehouse, something catches his eye. Several sets of fresh footprints leading inside. None coming out. Bingo.

“There are footprints,” he murmurs. 

_“How many?”_ Rook asks. Tim can hear the shuffle of him moving. _“Ooh, there’s a roof hatch. Pincer move? Hey, what about Pincer? That’s a pretty cool name.”_

Tim narrows his eyes at the footprints. “At least ten, I think,” he says. He processes the rest of the statement, then adds, “Maybe if I can find another entrance, and no. That sounds dumb.”

Rook sighs over the comm. _“A party, and we weren’t even invited.”_ There’s some more shuffling. _“There’s a service entrance on the right wall. Looks locked, but I assume you at least have the tech to deal with that,”_

The teasing note in his tone is both amusing and irritating. Tim rolls his eyes, and heads around the corner.

_“Also, yeah. It does sound dumb, huh?”_

“Why did you even suggest it?” Tim asks. He sees the door and creeps over. Almost certainly locked, unless they were dealing with absolute idiots. He tugs on the handle experimentally anyway.

Yeah, locked. Tim pulls out the lockpick from his belt.

Rook says, _“Still better than Red Robin,”_ and laughs at the curt huff Tim gives in response. 

“Can you get a visual on the inside?” Tim asks, working at the lock steadily. It’s not that sophisticated, but he’s trying to be quiet, and there’s an entire part of his mind dedicated to thinking about hero names instead of like, anything else more useful. 

A minute or so later, Tim hears a small noise of victory from Rook. Good. Tim had finished with the lock already.

 _“I’m in,”_ Rook murmurs. _“What do you think about Cardinal?”_

Tim makes a face. “Not a fan of the religious undertones,” he replies. 

Rook doesn’t respond for a while. Not quite long enough that there’s cause for concern, but Tim starts to feel antsy anyway.

 _“Alright, I did a lap,”_ suddenly comes through on the comm. Tim breathes out a sigh of almost-relief. _“There’s nobody in the main area. Come in. Quietly.”_

“Naturally,” Tim says, rolling his eyes. He pulls open the door and slips through the shadows it creates, weirdly conscious of the almost imperceptible pads of his boots. Nobody can hear it, but still. Ugh. 

He looks up, seeing Rook crouched on one of the ceiling beams. He gives Tim a wave.

Tim waves back.

Rook had been right. The entire main section of the warehouse is deserted. There’s also less light in here, and less exposure to the elements, so Tim can’t spot the trail of footsteps anymore. He purses his lips, then looks up to Rook. There are some doors towards the back of the warehouse. He jerks his head towards them.

Rook nods, and begins to move along the beams. Tim slinks against the wall, trailing his path. 

As they get closer to the doors, it becomes more and more evident that this is, in fact, what they’re looking for. Tim doesn’t know if Rook can hear it from all the way up there, but down on ground level, he only just has to strain to pick up on it.

Muted whispers.

Without looking up, Tim makes the _come down_ signal. Then he realizes that Rook is from a different universe, and might not understand that. He looks up, ready to correct his misstep, and sees Rook gently letting himself down with his grapple.

Rook lands next to him. No noise. Goddamnit, Tim’s going to be thinking about that all night. 

Rook tilts his head, having picked up on the noise now that he’s closer. They’re both looking at the same door. It’s the one furthest on the left, and even though it’s tightly shut and there’s no light coming from it, the sound definitely originates from there.

Tim nods, and takes the lead. He’s fairly sure he has no authority over Rook whatsoever, especially since he suspects they’re the same age, but it’s his universe, or something. Look, somebody has to take the lead.

Feeling Rook fall into step behind him is pretty gratifying as well. 

Despite his and Rook’s encroaching movement, the whispers don’t clarify themselves. Whoever that it is behind this door is being careful. Being measured. It spells out bad news, which spells out good news for Tim; he’s all geared up for confrontation now. He likes being sneaky: the waiting game always gives way to the fighting game, which gives way to victory which gives way to knowing that he’s done his tiny, miniscule, everything part to make the world better.

Rook taps him on the shoulder, and gestures to a shadow from a crate that sits against the wall. Tim nods.

He moves closer to the door, and watches as Rook blends into the shadow of the crate. Backup. It’s going to be near impossible for them to fight inside the room, especially if there are ten people, but this works. Tim can lure them out, and then Rook can come from behind. Tim trusts that Rook knows what he’s doing. 

He inches closer to the door. He can almost make out the shape of the words now.

He hovers right in front of it. Cold air breezes out through the gap between wall and door, and following that comes a conversation. Tim catches the whisps of noise and translates them into words in his mind, and then pauses. Turns off his crime-fighting brain, and turns on his problem-solving one.

 _“I don’t know,”_ somebody whispers. Tim tries his best not to make generalizing statements, but this voice, young and reedy, doesn’t sound much like a crime lord. _“I think I like her. A lot. But every time I try to say something, my head just…”_

 _“Goes blergh,”_ supplies another voice. Also young. Gentler. Amused. Oh, fucking hell. _“Yeah. I get it. It’s. It’s hard.”_

 _“She’s just so great,”_ the first voice whispers again, sad and whiny. Fucking _hell._ Tim steps away from the door.

Alright, what’s his next move? What is the precedent for this? He’s just walked in on what he’s pretty sure is a bunch of really stupid teens doing something really stupid, that much is obvious, but the way forward is unclear.

He could just leave. He could just leave, but this is Gotham, and this is the Docks, and even if there’s ten of them, _this is Gotham. And this is the Docks._ He can’t just leave. He doesn’t particularly want to knock on this door, but he’s fast coming to the conclusion that he might have to, and jesus _christ_ , Tim is about to become the first ever hero/vigilante to break up a fucking teen sleepover like he’s a cop. 

The analogy makes him feel terrible. He doesn’t want to be a cop. Nobody on earth should want to be a cop. 

In his ear, his comm flickers to life. _“What’s happening?”_ Rook asks.

Tim sighs, silent as he can, and turns to where Rook is waiting. He’s certain that the kids inside the office aren’t paying the outside a lick of attention, so he turns on his suit light. It illuminates his hands.

He signs _teens. Sleepover._ He pauses, and then adds, _stupid._ He turns off his suit light.

Rook steps out of the shadows, just enough that Tim can see him. Very slow, and very exaggerated, he facepalms.

Tim closes his eyes and nods. Sentiment received loud and clear, and reciprocated in turn.

He turns back towards the door. He thinks about saving people, and about virtue, and about righteous anger, and all of those other important things. Part of the job. It's part of the fucking job.

 _“I believe in you,”_ Rook says. It would be more convincing if the amusement wasn’t so clear in his tone, but Tim takes the encouragement that he can get.

He knocks on the door.

 _“Holy fucking shit,”_ is hissed immediately. There's some scrambling noises Tim belatedly realizes that they obviously not going to open the door for him. He did not think this through. Fucking. Hell.

He closes his eyes and sends up a brief prayer to anybody who is listening that they’re all fully clothed. He turns the door handle, finds it unlocked, and pulls the door open.

Two girls, eyes wide and faces pale, stare up at him. They’re sitting up in sleeping bags next to each other. Further into the office, eight more people are snoring quietly in sleeping bags of their own. 

He’s a professional. Red Robin is a professional, and a hero, and a trusted name in Gotham. He tells himself this once, and then does it again for good measure. 

He spies a lightswitch, and turns it on. 

After getting a look at him, the girls… still look pretty terrified. But less in fear for their lives, and more just… general fear. 

At the sudden brightness, some of the others begin to stir.

Tim can’t help it. He rubs a hand over his face.

“Guys,” is all he has to say before the two girls burst into noise.

They stumble over themselves to apologize and justify themselves and say other things that Tim can't pick out in the cacophony, apparently uncaring of whether they wake up their companions. Tim feels bad for scaring them so much, but mostly he just feels... ridiculous. This is ridiculous.

He puts up a hand, and all the noise stops. Gratifying, if he's willing to put aside the knowledge that he's ruling this kingdom with fear and tyranny.

He says, "This is incredibly dangerous for you to be doing. I'm not going to ask what you were thinking, nor do I require an apology, but I will have to ask you guys to leave."

He hears Rook snort in amusement over the comm. 

Ignoring the urge to smile, Tim continues, “Did you guys drive here?” He hadn’t seen a car nearby, but they might’ve parked it somewhere out of the way. 

One of the girls who had been awake earlier shakes her head. The other one has set about waking everyone up and hastily packing, and god, Tim feels _bad,_ but this is a disaster waiting to happen. He cannot let this continue. Was he this dumb as a tee—yeah, okay, he’s not finishing that question, he knows. 

“We walked here,” the girl says, staring at the floor. “One of us lives close by.”

Tim purses his lips. He returns to his prior points: this is Gotham, and this is the Docks. He can’t let them walk home alone. Even if there’s ten of them.

He nods slowly. “Alright,” he says, shifting his weight on his feet, “you guys pack up, and then my ally and I escort you home.”

There’s immediate dissent from nearly everybody, but Tim’s not hearing it. He just crosses his arms and stares, and waits for the noise to die down. It goes pretty quickly. Bullet to the head kind of quickly. 

One of them, in a very weak and intimidated attempt at protest, mumbles, “Don’t you have… uh… more important things to do?”

Yes. But he’s not going to say that. Plus, keeping dumb teenagers safe is a very noble thing to do. Probably.

He shakes his head and says, “It’s Gotham. Better safe than sorry. Clean up here, and let’s go.”

Reluctantly, they all get ready to go. When their sleeping bags are rolled up and their snacks have been gathered, and Tim is still trying to get over the fact that they planned a sleepover in an empty Gotham docks warehouse, he leads them outside.

Rook is waiting, a shit-eating grin on his face.

The kids file out behind Tim, evidently unnerved by this person they’ve never seen before. 

“Hi, kids,” Rook says. He doesn’t drop the grin.

Tim sighs. “Everyone,” he says, looking back at the gathered group, “this is my… ally. Rook.” 

He pauses. He considers it, then he adds, “He’s from another dimension,” because at this point, he’s about given up.

Their eyes widen. The initial shock and terror seem to be wearing off, and it’s obviously hit a few of them that they’re going to be escorted home by Red Robin, who, while intimidating, is also a _hero._ Tim’s almost certain they’re going to ask his autograph or something before the walk is over.

“Wow,” one of them says, jaw slack, _“cool._ Does this happen a lot?”

Tim and Rook look at each other. Tim shrugs. Rook shrugs.

“More than I’d like,” Tim settles on replying. 

“Wow,” the kid says again.

They set off. By the time they get out of the warehouse, the atmosphere has relaxed enough that a low murmur of chatter has started up. Tim would be concerned about their conspicuity, but anybody who feels the need to attack a group of ten teenagers and two vigilantes has to be a) incurably idiotic and b) an absolute asshole, so Tim would have no problem and no qualms with beating the shit out of them.

He’s walking off to the side of the group, thus letting the kids take the lead, but still staying firmly close. Rook, who had been trailing a little further back and talking to one of the kids for some reason, comes up next to him.

He throws an arm around Tim. He grins.

“So,” he says, in a tone that already makes Tim want to kick him, “I _really_ think we need to revisit Killjoy as an option.”

Tim easily escapes Rook’s embrace and easily kicks him in his shinguards, but it’s a little harder to hide his smile.

* * *

After the kids are escorted safely home, Tim and Rook find themselves on some surburban Gotham street, bathed in the low light of the streetlamps. 

Rook looks at Tim. Tim looks back.

Rook puts his hands over his face and bursts into muffled laughter. Tim very quickly follows suit, covering his mouth and curling his shoulders inwards as he giggles. There’s a lot he could say about the vigilante life, but one thing Tim has to concede is that it’s _never_ predictable.

They pull themselves together after the laughing fit, and head off again. Thankfully, no more teenage shenanigans present themselves; it’s a pretty standard patrol from there on out. Stopping an attempted mugging while they’re making their way back to the docks. Breaking up what is obviously a drug trade in some warehouse on the corner of Argyle St. Taking a picture of the _FUCK BATMAN_ graffiti on one of the walls. 

The night passes, and Tim and Rook work together with a steadiness and rhythm that usually comes after months of training together. It’s good. It’s satisfying work and it feels good and Tim had thought he had let go of all that stuff, but the tiny child buried deep inside of him is inordinately pleased that he’s patrolling with Jason Fucking Todd and having a blast.

Everything goes as well as a night of fighting crime in Gotham can. Until an explosion goes off at the other end of the district. 

Tim and Rook whirl around to look at each other, and it only takes a brief moment of eye contact before they’re both off.

Tim thinks. He’s thinking. A fire seems to have started from the explosion, and the location of the flames is eerily close to that first warehouse they had checked out. He can’t tell exactly from here, but he does wonder. He swings a little faster. It meaks he takes his landings a little harder in his haste, but he can barely feel it.

Had they—no, surely not. Surely that group of teens wouldn’t have snuck out again after Tim and Rook had taken them home. And even if they had, that doesn’t explain the fact that there is now a warehouse on fire. 

Tim briefly entertains the idea that the kids were a part of some evil plot, and then discards it. Unlikely. They couldn’t have accounted for being discovered, and they wouldn’t have gone back knowing that Red Robin and Rook were out on patrol. What, then?

Somebody targeting them? But why? They’re a harmless group of teenagers, though innocence generally doesn’t factor into a villain’s choice of victim. Except as an encouragement. Maybe that’s a bad point. Still, how would they have accounted for the fact that the kids would come back? Why hadn’t they just blown up the warehouse while Tim and Rook were still inside? That’s two extra targets, and _much_ more desirable ones than a bunch of teenagers. 

By the time they arrive at the warehouse, Tim still has no idea. The only resolution he’s found is that it is, in fact, the place from the start of the night. Jesus.

“Fuck,” Rook breathes, watching the wreckage. Some of the roof has collapsed already.

Tim breathes in. He breathes out. Okay. He’s got this. He’s good in a crisis. He’s good in a crisis, which is mostly a lie, but Rook doesn’t have to know that. 

“Do you think—” he starts, immediately getting cut off by Rook’s “Surely not,”

They stare at each other.

Rook says, “I’ll secure the perimeter. You should look. _Carefully.”_

Tim nods. The fire seems like it’s dying down already, which means that unless the wind picks up in the next few minutes his biggest risk is structural collapse. He doesn’t fancy his chances if he goes inside, but depending on where the explosion originated from, he should be able to tell if the offices at the back of the building are still intact or not. He should also be able to hear any commotion.

They part ways. 

Tim makes his way around to the back of the warehouse, keeping his steps light and controlled. He can already tell that this part of the building is in far better shape than the front, which is a good sign, and one that relaxes the anxiety in his chest somewhat. 

That’s about two seconds before the screaming starts up, and Tim feels his stomach plummet. Shit. _Shit._ He doesn’t fancy his chances breaking through the wall but he doesn’t think running in through the front door is a good idea. The service entrance was along the wall that had partially collapsed. He’s going to have to get through a window somehow. He should alert Rook, if Rook hadn’t heard it already. Shit.

The screaming stops. 

Tim aims his grapple at the window and pulls the trigger. It smashes through, hooks on the edge, and pulls him up. The smoke that pours through the window obscures all of his senses and stuns him for a moment, and it’s only a moment of distraction needed for somebody to aim, shoot, and send something piercing into his neck.

Tim drops.

* * *

Tim comes back to consciousness all at once, like he’s been trained to. He knows better than to open his eyes groan, because he doesn’t know where he is or what happened; the chance that he’s still in hostile territory is way too high. He just lies there, tries to figure out what the _fuck_ happened in the past thirty minutes, and prays that he isn’t alone.

Then, somebody slaps him gently on the face and says, “Red, I know you’re awake.”

He screws his eyes open to glare at Rook. Well. Prayers answered, huh?

“I was being careful,” he mutters, sitting up with some difficulty. He hasn’t fully regained mobility yet from whatever drug they got injected with, and half of his body is just _sore_ and surely going to bruise from taking that fall from the window. Tim scowls. It’s a little annoying seeing Rook up and about already. He can’t have woken up that much before Tim did. How had he shaken the effects off so quickly?

Tim scowls again. Rook catches the expression.

Reading Tim better than anybody who he had technically only met twice had a right to, Rook raises his eyebrows and says, “They only had one dose of the tranq, which they used on you. I don’t think they accounted for me.”

Tim turns his scowl down to his hands, watching his fingers slowly close. “Ugh,” he mutters. He pulls himself up so he’s against the wall of what appears to be a metal shipping container, and asks, “Do you know who got us?”

Rook grimaces. Uh oh. He sits down, legs crossed and hands clasped together, and says, “Okay, we’re gonna play a game.”

“What the fuck?” Tim says, because what the fuck?

Rook nods. “The game goes like this: I’m going to name somebody from my universe, and you’re going to tell me whether they’re good or bad here. Okay?”

No, not okay. Tim’s suddenly convinced he had gotten the better end of the deal, because even if he had received a dose of the tranquilizer, at least he hadn't been knocked on the head so hard that he'd gotten brain damage. 

“Are you okay?” Tim asks again.

Rook says, “The Joker.”

Tim stares at Rook. When it becomes obvious that he’s like, serious about this, and Tim’s not getting any other information unless he does this first, he says, “Bad.” He’s pretty sure they’ve already established that. 

Rook nods. “Catwoman?” he continues. Tim does something complicated with his expression, and that’s apparently all the response Rook needs.

He nods. “Yeah, us too. Okay. Uh, Silvertongue.”

Tim frowns, racking his memory. He’s pretty sure he’s never come across that name, even in other people’s mission files. “I don’t think we have them,” he replies.

“Lucky,” Rook says, shaking his head. “Next. Uh, Ra’s Al Ghul.”

“Bad,” Tim says immediately. “Super bad.”

Rook winces. Oh, no. 

“Damn,” he says emphatically.

Oh god. Tim unequivocally has the worst life ever.

“I was really hoping you would say otherwise,”

Tim squeezes his eyes shut. “Why do you think it’s Ra’s?” he asks. He manages to keep his voice steady at least. 

“Well,” Rook says, “since I only got knocked over the head and not tranquilized, I woke up partway through them transporting us here, and heard them talking about the Demon Head. So uh, if there’s anybody else using that title, that would be cool, but if not...”

Tim puts his face in his hands. He can’t decide whether the churning in his gut is a sign that he’s going to throw up, have a panic attack, or go into rage then develop hitherto undiscovered Black Canary-esque powers and scream their way out of here.

Rook continues. “They also took our comms, and I assume they disabled the tracking in our suit as well, but I’ve activated my distress signal just in case. Also, I managed to slip my recorder out of my pocket while we were moving, and that’s trackable as long as Oracle gets to a computer anytime in the night, so. We’ll probably be fine. I think.”

He reaches out and pats Tim on the shoulder.

Tim says, hands still over his face, “If we get out of this alive, I want you to bring me back to your dimension and let me move in with you.”

Rook laughs unenthusiastically. God. Tim hates this stupid fucking job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was kinda mad at tim before writing this chapter bc tumblr discourse was annoying me (yes i know i shouldnt be letting a characters fans influence my feelings on the character themselves whatever) and then halfway through writing i realized that tim is basically my annoying dumbass cousin except as a vigilante and then i was like :/ fuck :\ okay i love you again :/ stupid nerd :\ i feel like one of the main characters in those terrible stories where men learn to care about womens rights because smth awful happens to a woman they’re related to except im being taught to care abt rich neglected asian men rights.  
> i have absolutely no idea where this storyline is going! let's find out together! 
> 
> here is my [tumblr](https://danishsweethearts.tumblr.com/), where i will post fic snippets, talk to myself, and also inform you whether a chapter will be late or not! next week there may not be a chapter bc i have a shitton of uni work! stay safe! see yall!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update schedules are a social construct. anw. this is from reverse!tim's perspective, and he's notably more "i hate my dad" than i would write him in canon. this may throw ppl off a bit, since it's probably one of my bigger characterization changes, and it's because of circumstances in reverse!au that i havent actually revealed since i'm enigmatic and mysterious, but i hope it doesn't deter u from reading. i never wanted this au to be just a reflection/improvement/criticism of canon, and ideally 4 me, this is a universe that can stand on its own and have stories and issues and developments completely distinct from canon at times. which is. ambitious and very preseumptuous of me, but hey. who's here to tell me no. tom king can call me up himself if he doesn't like it

After what feels like ages, Tim, Knight, Batgirl and Batman finally head out. Tim can’t say that he’s happy about this particular teamup, but it’s his own fault for not paying attention to everyone splitting off. At least Knight had been nice enough to stick around with him. Even though she looks like she hadn’t wanted to. 

At least there’s not that much talking on their way over to Upper East. They’re just concentrating on getting there, and getting there fast; it gives Tim time to remind himself of the rhythm of patrolling.

He likes the quiet. He really hopes that it will remain this way for most of patrol.

The pull and rush of taking the rooftops brings him back, like it always does when something pushes him out into the field, but as they go, he finds that he misses his computer setup at home. He misses the reassuring weight of a headset over his ears. He misses the information at his command.

Mostly, he misses having a mute button under his finger. Having Knight around is good, grounding, but the Batman and Batgirl of this universe are just such  _ wild cards.  _ Tim feels a little unsettled.

He can’t get a real grip on them, nor does he find he particularly wants to. It would’ve been fun to discuss and compare with any other people in the family, but with these two? Tim can sense that he’s a little out of his depth. His dying sense of emotional self-preservation has been waging war with his forever thriving sense of curiosity over it for a while now, because he  _ does  _ want to know more: he’s just not sure whether he’s willing to deal with the fallout. 

For now, Tim keeps his mouth shut and concentrates on keeping his balance, and manages to make it there unscathed. They reach Upper East, with its low lights and drawn curtains, and there it begins.

Batgirl lands next to him, quiet but with enough presence that she’s impossible to miss, and asks, “How long has Stephanie been the Red Hood?”

Tim looks past Batgirl to make eye contact with Knight, who frowns. A little further off, Batman is looking off into the distance, giving off the impression that he’s not listening. Obviously not true, but it’s one less person to deal with. Tim returns his gaze to Batgirl.

“Uh, look,” he says, “You should really ask her. Not me.”

Hurt flashes across Batgirl’s face, and she looks away. The regret sneaks up on Tim, smacking him in the face when he sees the pain on his sister’s, alternate dimension or no, face. 

“She does not want to talk to me,” she says. “I tried.”

Tim’s immediate reaction is to reach out, but he tamps down on it firmly. Batgirl’s entire body language has closed off, and with the way she’s withdrawn into herself, Tim doesn’t think touching her is a good idea. He doesn’t  _ have _ any good ideas about how to deal with this.

Tim’s halfway through planning his next move, the options for which range from throwing down a smoke bomb and running for it or giving Batgirl a highlights reel of all the things that have gone wrong in Steph’s life, when Knight moves closer to them. 

_ Thank god, _ Tim thinks. He needs backup.

Coming around to stand next to Tim, which briefly—and foolishly—puts Tim at ease, Knight sends Batgirl a  _ look _ and says, “You did not make a good first impression,”

_ Thank god _ rescinded. Tim’s moment of respite is ruined. He looks between Knight and Batgirl with wide eyes. How had he missed this development? Knight looks genuinely pissed, which is never a fun sight. Even worse that it’s directed at somebody who Tim doesn’t think they should piss off either. 

Obviously, if it comes down to it, he’s on Knight’s side all the way; he’d just really like for it to not come down to it. He shifts, moving his weight onto his good leg instinctively.

Batgirl looks up at Knight, her expression pinched. 

“I wasn’t trying to hurt her,” she says, crossing her arms. “I wanted to know.”

Tim looks back and forth between Knight and Batgirl again. Neither of them seem forthcoming with any more context, which makes navigating this conversation pretty hard for Tim; he wishes he had been paying more attention to what had been going down in the cave. Why had he let himself get distracted by the strange security settings on the computer? They had been so different from the ones he programmed at home; there was such an effortless kind of flair with them, like whoever made them had been more interested in turning him in corners instead of keeping him out. Giving him the false impression that there was an endpoint, if he could just hold on a little longer. It had been fascinating. And, admittedly, probably more effective in holding up an intruder than simply turning them away.

“Just… leave her alone,” Knight says, snapping Tim out of his thoughts. He mentally kicks himself for getting distracted again over the fucking security settings. They hadn’t been that interesting, okay? Well, they had, but more for the novelty then for—

He redirects his thoughts before he goes back down that path  _ again, _ and focuses on the conversation at hand.

A look at Knight tells him that she’s pretty damn unhappy. A look at Batgirl tells him about the same, except her unhappiness is tempered by confusion. Tim’s stuck between an angry vigilante with assassin training and a hard place, which happens to take the form of another angry vigilante with assassin training, and he has no idea how to defuse the situation if he doesn’t know what the situation  _ is. _

That’s when Batman clears his throat. Tim’s never been happier to hear that annoying fucking growl.

“Batgirl,” he says shortly. His gaze travels over to Knight, then Tim. He continues, “Keep alert. Our target should show up soon,”

Tonight, they've been tasked with investigating claims of a cult meeting up in a park in the area every night. Tim feels like that's a bit excessive, even for a Gotham cult; what is there even for a cult to  _ do _ every single night? Surely a weekly, or even biweekly schedule would make more sense. Also, according to the data, they haven't even murdered anyone yet. Of course, it’s sure to be coming, since again: Gotham cult, but Tim just can’t figure out what there even would be to do in the time beforehand. 

Stopping any murder before it happens is the idea, and figuring out what the fuck there is for any group of people to do when meeting every night will be a fun bonus.

Then again, Tim is a part of a group of people who meet every single night and find ways to occupy the time, so maybe he can't judge. It's not _ quite _ a cult, but hey: maybe in another universe. Ha. 

Knight nods her head stiffly at Batman, and then swings over to another rooftop. It makes sense to pair off, considering they'll be tailing a target, so Tim goes to follow her.

"Wait," Batman snaps.

Tim raises his eyebrows. Considers ignoring Batman, but decides to stay put.

Looking in the direction Knight went, then looking at Batgirl, Batman says, "Batgirl, go with her."

"What?" Tim asks. It makes no sense to pair them off like that. A child could've picked up on the tension between Knight and Batgirl, and Batman is supposed to be the world's greatest detective. Not to mention that Tim hasn't exactly been subtle about how he doesn't want to talk to him. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm going with Knight."

Batman looks at Tim. He looks at Batgirl.

Underneath Batman's sharp gaze, she tenses. She looks at him, and then at Tim, and then at Knight's barely visible figure on the roof over.

She seems to be considering something. Then, like a flash of lightning, conviction settles in in her expression.

She says, "I'll go," and takes off before Tim can so much as blink. 

Batman makes a neutral grunt and then turns away, leaving Tim staring at where Batgirl had just been in shock.

“What?” Tim says, again. Batman grunts,  _ again. _

It's nice to know that  _ that _ is a universal constant. Wonderful. Seriously. Batman's penchant for speaking like caveman can withstand the test of time and dimensions, but apparently the number of limbs Tim possesses is fair game.

He squeezes his eyes shut. 

Okay, that's not fair. Not to the Tim of this dimension, and not to himself.

From ahead of him, Batman says, "Oracle."

Tim opens his eyes and looks at Batman. Finds that he's not looking back. Batman has moved ahead, his eyes trained on an office building diagonal from the rooftop they're on currently.

He says, "There's a better vantage from there." Doesn't even turn back to look at Tim. "With me, Oracle."

It has been a long, long time since Tim's patrolled with Batman. He still doesn't remember him being so liberal with his  _ orders.  _ He can’t say he’s fond of it.

He crosses his arms and snaps, "I'm not your sidekick."

Batman turns back to him. Looking surprised, in that vague, roundabout way that Batman experiences emotions, like he doesn’t know what Tim is so upset about. Tim narrows his eyes.

“Of course you aren’t my sidekick,” Batman says, still looking a little thrown off. “I never said that.”

Tim stares at Batman for a while longer, squinting until the irritation or condescension or authoritativeness that is sure to be lurking under the cowl reveals itself, but he finds nothing. It seems that Batman hadn’t actually had bad intentions.

Which leads Tim to believe he just speaks like that to everyone in the field.

Which is…

_ Unbelievably annoying,  _ his brain provides first. Then he really gets thinking, moving past the annoyance, and finds himself ending up at  _ something he must be used to. _ A whole different can of worms, that is. He purses his lips.

Batman is looking at him expectantly, waiting for some kind of response. 

Tim bites his lip, and says, “I don’t need to be told what to do,”

The cowl makes an already inscrutable man harder to read, but Tim’s gotten good at discerning emotion from voice and little else. When Batman looks away and says, “Naturally,” he sounds quietly accepting. If Tim pushed the interpretation, he would almost consider it doleful. 

This is weird. This is  _ so weird. _

Deciding to give himself the mercy of looking away from Batman’s strange half-expressions, he says, “You can go up if you want.” He shifts his weight, shuffles on his feet. “I prefer to avoid making landings from high elevations, so I’ll stay down here,”

Batman looks at his leg. 

“Past injury?” he asks quietly. The question makes Tim bristle.

Logically, he knows that transparency is important, especially if they’re going to be patrolling together, but he can’t quite find it in him to elaborate. Being on patrol is one thing, and being on patrol with Batman is another thing; he’s not going to make it harder for himself by bringing up that baggage. Or harder for Batman. This version of Bruce seems like he has enough on his plate.

Tim shrugs. “Yeah, something like that.”

Batman steps closer. He looks up at the office building, and then back towards Tim.

He says, “We’ll stay down here.”

Tim raises his eyebrows.

Batman pauses, then amends himself. “I’ll stay down here. With you. Since you were already going to stay down here.”

Tim snorts despite himself. Quirking up his mouth, he says, “We’ll work on it,” 

Batman seems pleased at the sight. He nods, and then they push into the shadows and settle in for waiting.

As they do, Tim hears his comm flicker on.

_ “Are you okay?” _ Knight asks. Tim smiles.

Tapping his ear to reply, he says, “Yeah.” He looks in Batman’s direction, but he pointedly hasn’t shifted, so Tim figures the conversation will be safe from interruption, if not eavesdropping. He says, “What about you?”

Knight huffs, something childish and and petulant. It’s identical to the childish and petulant huff Shadow still lets slip sometimes, and the one that Robin is slowly but surely picking up. Tim’s smile grows. 

_ “I’m okay,” _ she responds. She sighs.  _ “Batgirl isn’t talking. And I don’t know what to say.” _

Knight values her words highly. She likes knowing what to say, and likes being able to choose when silence suits her better. At least on this side Tim and Batman have started laying out the foundations of understanding. It’s probably a little harder to navigate for the other two.

“What were you guys talking about earlier?” he asks quietly. “About Red Hood. Our Red Hood.”

Knight sighs again, an unhappy sound, and Tim feels himself tensing up in response to her unease. 

_ “Batgirl asked her if she kills,” _ she says shortly.

“Jesus,” Tim breathes. No wonder Knight was pissed. That’s a topic that most of  _ them _ tiptoe around on bad days; who the hell is somebody from another dimension to ask about it?

_ “Yeah,” _ Knight replies sourly.  _ “Steph wasn’t happy.”  _ Her tone is sharp, just shy of cutting, which tells Tim that they’ve got an eavesdropper on her side as well.  _ One day, _ Tim thinks. One day he will find people to spend time with who aren’t incorrigble busybodies.

“Can’t imagine why,” Tim offers dryly, which gets a dry snort from Knight in return. “Though, I think she got the best deal for tonight, out of all of us.”

Knight makes a noise of agreement, then says,  _ “Spoiler seems cool. And the Robins will be fun, if they don’t tear each other apart,” _

“Knowing Hood,” Tim says, smile playing at his face, “she’ll find that even more fun,”

Knight giggles quietly in response.  _ “True,” _ she says. She pauses. The silence draws out for a bit, chosen and purposeful, so Tim doesn’t say anything. 

Knight adds, soft and concerned,  _ “I hope she’s happy.” _

Tim sighs. “I hope so too,” he replies. With more than just the patrol set-up tonight. He knows that Knight, and the rest of the family, must feel bad for even dragging her into this in the first place. Hearing Jason’s frantic distress message, the one that had been sent to  _ everyone, _ had probably chipped off a few years of Tim’s life. And for all that Steph considers herself a lone wolf, she’s never turned down a request for help. 

Of course she had come running. Her and Tim both, and while greater numbers usually mean they would scrape by any dangerous encounter a-okay, it hadn’t worked out this time. This time, they’re all stuck in another dimension, with mirrors of themselves they may not want to see. 

Tim sighs again.

“This is a mess,” he says, shaking his head.

_ “Isn’t it,” _ Knight agrees.  _ “At least nobody has started a fight yet,” _

Tim snorts. “Ten dollars on the Robins being first,” he says.

Knight giggles again.  _ “Ten dollars on Red Robin and Rook,” _

“Deal,” Tim says. 

Batman clears his throat.

Tim looks over, begrudgingly accepting the fact that he’s going to have to deal with the caveman grunts for the rest of the night. “Yes?” he murmurs.

“There’s somebody approaching,” Batman says. He looks at the space next to him, and then at Tim.

Rolling his eyes, Tim shuffles forward until he’s up against the railing, and peers down. No need for binoculars; he can see the disturbance easily enough. Somebody is approaching.

Quite a few somebodys.

“It’s a party,” he comments lightly.

Batman makes some noise between a hum and a grunt. Tim can’t quite figure out whether it’s amused or disapproving. “It’s a cult,” he replies.

Disapproving, then. Can’t win ‘em all, Tim guesses. 

“Who says cults can’t throw parties?” Tim says, before rising enough that he has a better angle on the people’s faces. He pulls out his binoculars this time, snapping some pictures of the culprits and sending them back to his own database out of habit. They’ve already been sent off by the time he remembers that he doesn’t  _ have _ full access to his own database.

He’ll have to get the information off the binoculars manually then, later tonight. When he settles back down, Batman peers at the binoculars.

He makes a short little  _ hn _ sound, and then asks, “Did you identify them?”

Tim shrugs, sliding open his gauntlet and wondering if he can connect to a computer that isn’t  _ in _ this universe from it. The answer is no, obviously, but at least he had tried. In the name of science and such. 

“I can’t access my data from here,” he murmurs, “but if I got back to the cave…”

The procession of people is level with their building now. They’ll have to wait until they’re a ways ahead before starting the tailing, so Tim settles in with fiddling around with his gauntlet. He can’t remember if he had packed cords in his belt. He doesn’t think so. He had been out the door… pretty hastily, after all.

Batman shakes his head, saying, “The Batcave is too far. Better to stay on the case for now.”

Tim makes an undignified choking sound as he tries to tamp down on his surprised laugh. “You call it the  _ Batcave?”  _ he whispers, eyes wide and voice cracking.

Batman frowns lightly. “What do you call it?”

“The... cave. Just the cave.” Tim says, growing more amused by the second. “What, do you call it the  _ Batcar _ as well?”

Batman’s jaw clenches slightly. It takes a moment for Tim to place whether it’s from annoyance or amusement.

“The Batmobile, actually,” Batman corrects. It’s amusement. “And the Batcomputer. Among other things,”

_ “The Batmobile,” _ Tim repeats, unable to repress the delight in his tone. “Oh my god,”

It only happens for a brief moment, a millisecond-long flicker, but Batman smiles. “Nightwing named everything. Back when he was Robin,”

“Oh my god,” Tim says again, grinning. The image of tiny Robin running around that big cave on his own and naming everything he could—it’s exactly the kind of thing a Dick Grayson left to his own devices would pull. It’s an adorable thought. 

It’s also a little sad. Tim tries to hold onto the warmth and amusement, but, as always, his mind catches and stumbles on the darker parts. 

He had been all alone, hadn’t he? The very first. Tim can’t really imagine it, even though the proof is here, living and breathing and getting along tremendously with Shadow. He can’t really imagine a world where Shadow wasn’t the first at all. Or at least, since he doesn’t necessarily _have_ to imagine, he can’t really bring himself to like it.

They fall back into a semi-awkward silence: one that acknowledges that they both have more to say, but aren’t saying it. 

Tim wonders how Knight and Batgirl are doing. The weird cult procession has moved on enough that Tim and Batman are on the move now, and Tim hasn’t seen any movement from their companions, but assumes they’re keeping up. He doesn’t really have any concentration to spare as they go anyway; the procession is easy enough to keep track of, but Batman is quite the opposite. Tim’s too used to having cameras and drones to help him track. It’s not difficult, following that shimmer of shadow, but it does border on challenging. 

They tail the people all the way to their destination, an overrun park that the local council have obviously given up on managing. There are already people standing around waiting, but it seems that the group they were following are the main body of people. 

Tim shudders. Cults are never fun to deal with, and he can already tell that most of these people, if not all, are just civilians. Ones that have been taken advantage of and manipulated. It leaves a terrible taste in his mouth.

Even worse is that their puppetmaster hasn’t revealed themself yet. The crowd has converged, clustering near a weathered statue of some old Gotham dude, but none of them has stepped forward.

It seems as if nobody is doing anything at all. They’re all just standing around and waiting; occasionally whispering to their neighbour, or passing around flasks that steam in the mild air, but doing nothing of note outside of that.

It’s eerie. It’s  _ so  _ fucking eerie.

Tim looks over to Batman, who has settled himself in a hiding place, eyes narrowed as he looks down at the crowd. Tim taps the ground gently.

Batman looks over, then inclines his head towards the space next to him. Telling Tim to stay. To settle in. 

Tim’s willing to put up with a lot in this job, but a surprise stakeout with only Batman for company really pushes it. Ugh.

Batman taps his ear, murmuring, “Knight, Oracle, position yourselves on the other side. It’s going to be along night,”

Tim groans internally at the words.  _ It’s going to be a long night. _

Exhaling slowly, he moves closer to Batman, tucking himself further into the shadows. He focuses his thoughts on the people underneath him. He remembers what he does this all for.

So they wait.

They wait, and they keep waiting. The time crawls like ants over his skin; every movement has him thinking that the other shoe is about to drop, and it’s all about to start. It’s not like he’s impatient, or bad with stakeouts; it’s just that the pressure of not  _ knowing _ bruises him badly. If he had any idea at all what to look out for, or what to expect, this would be easier, but he’s jumping at shadows instead.

Ugh, Tim  _ hates _ going into situations blind. He should’ve stayed behind in the cave. It would’ve taken him some time to figure out the systems on the computer, but he would’ve probably been more useful there than here. 

He rocks forward onto the balls of his feet, staring down at the crowd below.

Next to him, Batman shifts as well. Tim hears the soft tap of gloved fingers on the concrete roof, and he looks back.

Batman’s lips are pursed. He says, “You don’t patrol often,”

One secret. Tim just wants to have  _ one _ secret, obvious or not to the prying eyes of the people around him, that gets left alone. 

“I don’t,” he replies. He returns to watching the crowd.

There’s a moment of silence. Tim isn’t foolish enough to think that’ll be the end of it, but he is foolish enough to hope. 

Then, Batman says, “You don’t really like me.”

Tim exhales loud enough that Batman should be able to hear it. Just to try and dissuade him from continuing down this line of discussion. Because it’s Batman, it does not achieve the intended effect; he simply continues to watch Tim. Nothing is ever easy.  _ Nothing. _

“It’s nothing personal,” Tim says, trying to keep his tone level.

“Did something happen in your universe?” Batman asks.

If he’s asking, it means that something  _ hasn’t _ happened in this universe. Tim had already known that what happened to him didn’t happen here, but this tells him there might not be any major conflict between Batman and Red Robin at all. 

Hm. Interesting. His curiosity, having previously thrown in the towel when faced against the combined forces of his emotional self-presevation and his general dislike of talking one-on-one to Bruce, raises the war banners again.

He gives Batman a sidelong glance. He grimaces. Still Batman. His curiosity fights valiantly, but the other side rides into battle armed with his mental catalogue of all the times Bruce has hurt him, and dominates the field.

Batman presses on, asking, “Does it involve your injury?”

Before Tim can think of something to say, his comm comes online. His heart jumps, because he’s still in stakeout mode, and if somebody’s opening a line then there must be something going wrong.

He puts a hand up towards Batman, and then taps his ear. Batman shifts, sharpening into focus, nodding back at Tim.

Knight’s voice comes through his earpiece. Flat and cold, she says,  _ “He’s bothering you,” _

“What?” Tim replies, blindsided. He’s still working to get his heartbeat under control, but there’s no urgency in Knight’s tone. Just patient annoyance.

_ “He’s bothering you,” _ Knight repeats.  _ “I can see it,” _

Tim frowns, feeling vaguely confused and somewhat wounded. Is this—is Knight trying to bail him out?

“You can’t see it,” he replies. “I’m hidden. And you’re all the way over there,”

Knight huffs.  _ “Night vision binoculars,” _ she says, the consonants sharp enough on her tongue that they pierce through Tim’s bewilderment. She’s genuinely mad. On his behalf. 

Tim feels a smile start to spread. He hopes Knight can see it.

“Shouldn’t you be paying attention to, uh, the cult gathered underneath us?” he asks. 

Knight huffs again, a little less unforgiving and a little more frustrated. A normal sort of frustration.  _ “I’m looking out for you,”  _ she says. Then, a little reluctantly, she adds,  _ “And nothing’s happening. I was curious,” _

Tim snorts. He hears the  _ tap tap _ again and turns around, making eye contact with Batman and his questioning expression. Tim shakes his head, waving a hand slightly. 

Batman doesn’t drop the curious look, but he does take himself off guard.

Tim looks over to the other side of the park, wondering what nook or cranny Batgirl and Knight have secured themselves in.

He says, “I’m okay. He was asking about the injury, that’s all.”

_ “Are you going to tell him?” _ Knight asks.

“No,” Tim replies immediately. Knight laughs softly in response.

_ “Good,” _ Knight says.  _ “I don’t think I like him.” _

She pauses, and Tim wonders whether the hesitation is for his sake or for her companion’s.

Knight continues,  _ “He’s very… intense.” _

Tim raises his eyebrows, hazarding a glance back at Batman. “It’s Batman,” he replies, because it’s  _ Batman. _

Knight clicks her tongue.  _ “Not like that,” _ she says, but there’s amusement hiding somewhere in her tone.  _ “In a bad way.” _

Knight is the people-reading expert, and she’s never been wrong before. Tim believes her. He nods, assuming that she still has eyes on him.

“I don’t like him either,” Tim says, “if that counts for anything,”

He feels a little bad, since Batman is  _ right there, _ but the laugh he gets out of Knight makes up for it.

_ “It doesn’t,” _ Knight replies. Then, in an apparent non-sequitur, she says,  _ “Batgirl knows about Robin.” _

Now  _ that’s _ an interesting tibit of information. Not a non-sequitur, either. It tells Tim that Knight doesn’t approve of Batman, but does of Batgirl. He guesses the girls must’ve been having a better time than him and Batman on this side.

“I thought none of them knew,” he says carefully. He resists the urge to look at Batman. He knows, he has to know, but Tim has no idea how deep the issue runs. He doesn’t want to step on any toes, but more importantly, he doesn’t want to be the one to start the conversation. It’s not his place at all.

It’s not a conversation they even should be having. Tim can’t help the grimace he gives, thinking about the way the Robin mantle has been treated here. 

_ “Nightwing told her,” _ Knight says.  _ “After that first time they travelled,” _

No wonder Batgirl got Knight’s approval so quickly. Tim doesn’t want to be presumptuous, but that has to be a pretty big gesture on Nightwing’s part.

“So she’s okay, then,” he says.

_ “She’s okay,” _ Knight confirms. Raising her voice a little, she adds,  _ “As long as she leaves Hood alone.” _

Tim snorts. Never one to miss being able to make a point, Knight.

There’s the telltale flicker of another channel being opened, and Tim switches over with an interested  _ hm. _

Though he doesn’t know why she changed channels, he’s still expecting Knight. And, true, the voice that comes through sounds like Knight, but he can tell that it’s Batgirl speaking. Something in the way she shapes her words. There’s more thought behind them. A little more consideration. Her tone drops a little deeper, as well. 

_ “It’s not polite,” _ Batgirl says,  _ “to say mean things when I’m right here,” _

“We weren’t saying mean things,” Tim says. 

_ “We said some,” _ Knight amends.  _ “Only at the start of the night.” _

Batgirl sighs and says,  _ “I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just wanted to know.” _

It can take a long time to learn, but it’s a fact that Tim’s become intensely familiar with ever since being Oracle: knowledge rarely ever doesn’t hurt.

Still, it’s not his place to be angry at Batgirl. Steph can fight her own battles. So Tim relaxes into where he had been sitting, letting himself ease into the space. He gives Batman a look, who returns it, considering. Tim looks away.

“No hard feelings,” he says.

Knight snorts.  _ “Not from us, at least.” _

They lapse into silence. The line remains open, and the small smile remains fixed on Tim’s face.

Like that, the waiting becomes a little less unbearable. 

He had needed that. A reminder that it isn’t just him and Batman here, watching over this inexplicably still crowd of people. 

In the end, they wait for quite a while. It’s a few hours, a few position changes, and several more scattered conversations—Tim even manages a few with Batman—before something happens. 

Not something to do with the crowd, however. Something smaller. Something worse.

A light goes off in Tim’s gauntlet. It’s a tiny little flash, but Tim feels himself, and Batman beside him, tense up.

Tim slides open his gauntlet, and narrows his eyes at the alarm lit up on the screen. It takes him a while to place it, because he’s never seen this specific one go off before, but when he does, he startles so badly that he almost strays into the glow of a nearby streetlight.

“What is it?” Batman snaps.

It’s a rerouted distress signal. 

All of his family’s distress signals are sent back to one of two places: the cave’s computer, or Tim’s computer. Tim had forgotten about the backup plan he had programmed in, where after going unacknowledged for a certain amount of time, they’ll get redirected to Tim’s gauntlet. It’s something he had never really thought would come into use. A small consideration, when compared to the constant danger they face.

He says, “Rook’s in danger. It’s his distress signal. But it—it has to have been going for a while now.”

His voice isn’t shaking, but the panic’s easy to pick out anyway.

Next to him, Batman stands up. In the wake of his strength and his resolve, already evident in the way he holds himself, Tim feels unsteady.

“Regroup,” Batman orders, and there are immediate confirmations from Knight and Batgirl.

“I need to get to a computer,” Tim says.  _ “Now.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's assessment season for me so updates will not be back to regular until like, another week or two at least. blame uni lol


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone! guess who it fucking is! it's me! i'm not dead! uni rly tried it i'll tell you but i made it thru and we should be back to regular chapters now :-)
> 
> also, i fucking hate that i have to say this, but no work i ever write will have batcest. if you ship batcest, ideally stop reading my fics, but at bare minimum **for the love of god, do not** inform me in the comments that you do. jesus christ.

The first thing Steph does when they leave the cave—well, okay, the  _ second: _ the first thing she actually does is tie the laces of her boots after noticing that they were undone. 

_ Anyway. _ The first significant thing she does is stop their little group on the side of the road, and motion to the boys.

The boys. The Robins. The Dynamic Duo, Diminuitive Edition. Etcetera.

She says, “Alright, we need to figure out this name business.”

Her alternate self, with an immediateness that says that she’s been waiting for this moment, suggests, “Fight to the death,”

“No,” Steph shoots back immediately. 

Her alternate self rolls her eyes and mutters something Steph can’t quite make out. Speaking of name business to figure out, she’s going to need to decide what to call her alternate self as well. Just calling her Alternate Steph or her alternate self is going to get confusing, not to mention  _ tiring, _ quickly, and it’s not like she can go back to Cool Villain Steph. 

Hm, what else is there? Steph refuses to call her Red Hood. It’s unbelievably weird to even  _ think  _ of calling a version of herself Red Hood. Too many implications. Steph refuses to touch that shit with a ten foot pole. 

Plus, her alternate self doesn’t even have a helmet, or a voice modder. Red Hood, in Steph’s mind, has a very specific aesthetic, and her alternate self just doesn’t line up.

She’s got like, an actual hoodie. Not even a cape with a hood. An actual hoodie. There has to be body armour under there somewhere, but all Steph can see is a blood-red hoodie layered underneath a black leather jacket. 

Honestly, it looks sick as hell. Alternate Steph is some kind of comfortable, crime-fighting genius. 

Steph will have to consider a Spoiler redesign, after tonight. This… Red Hoodie getup is beyond inspiring. Hm. Hoodie. Hoodie Steph.

Well… It does work. Also, this is her own damn head. There’s nobody around to judge Steph at all. Hoodie it is.

With a huff, Damian crosses his arms and says, “I’d win, anyway.”

Steph and Hoodie’s gazes meet, and then they both roll their eyes.  _ Children. _

Miniwing pulls a face at Damian. “Ooh, big bad Dami, what are you gonna do? Kick me in the shins?”

Steph has to hold back a laugh. It’s hardly a sophisticated insult, but it doesn’t need to be; it hits exactly where it hurts in Damian’s tiny assassin child pride. His face goes stormy. Whatever it says about Steph that she finds the expression cute, she resolves to ignore it.

Before any contact can be made or blood spilled, Hoodie reaches over and yanks Damian away by his cape. As he’s dragged back, Damian makes the same strangled yelping noise that dogs do when they get their leashes pulled, and turns to glare at Hoodie.

“Unhand me!” he demands. 

“Nope,” she replies. “Can’t let you kill the kid on my watch. Shadow would have my head,”

“Not a kid,” Miniwing calls out. He crosses his arms and makes a face. “Also, like I’d lose to him.”

Hoodie seems to consider this. 

After a few moments, she shrugs, and says, “Fair point.”

She releases Damian’s cape.

Damian, who is an idiot, lunges immediately for Miniwing. 

Miniwing, who is a trained vigilante and lifelong acrobat, smoothly jumps out of the way.

Steph rolls her eyes again. She gets the feeling she’s going to be doing a lot of that.

“Alright, enough,” she says, trying to channel some of Bruce’s growly-ness in her voice. She doesn’t think it succeeds, but the two Robins do stop bickering to turn to look at her, so that’s something. She continues with, “We haven’t even started patrol yet.”

Miniwing raises his eyebrows at her. “Yeah, because  _ you  _ stopped us.”

Steph stares at him. Very belatedly, it sets in for her exactly what kind of Dick Grayson she’s about to be patrolling with for the rest of the night. Dick Grayson, but a teenage boy. A teenaged Dick Grayson. A pubescent, hormonal and active acrobat vigilante youngest sibling.

This… may be out of her pay grade. And also  _ anybody’s  _ pay grade. 

Before she can say something like,  _ actually, I give up and I’m going to go hang out with Babs for the rest of the night, _ Hoodie steps forward.

“Don’t be a such a little jackass,” she says, waving a hand in Miniwing’s direction. “She’s right. We need to figure out how to differentiate you two. Confusion doesn’t belong on the field.”

Man, Hoodie sounds so cool, being all professional and knowledgable. Steph wonders if she has a team, back in her dimension. Should Steph start a team? She’s never really considered herself leader material before, but her alternate self seems to be doing a pretty good job, and their circumstances aren’t  _ that _ different. Maybe Steph just needs to murder a person or two, and she’ll discover her dormant talent for leadership.

…Or maybe Steph just needs to concentrate. Right. She nods to herself, and tunes back into the conversation to see Miniwing shrugging.

“Well, it’s pretty obvious,” he’s saying,  _ “I’m _ not the one wearing a stolen mantle, so why should I be the one who has to change?”

Damian rounds on him instantly. “I didn’t steal anything,” he hisses. He turns to look at Steph, eyes wide, like she can do anything about this situation. “I refuse to change,” he says, voice just bordering on plantitive.

Steph gets it. She does. She knows that Robin is important to him. She keeps this shit to herself because she knows that voicing it will only cause more problems, but if pressed, Steph might even say that Robin is probably important to Damian on a level that her, or Tim, or Jason, can’t even reach. 

So yeah, Steph gets it. 

Still. It isn’t her call to make. Especially not when she still doesn’t know where Miniwing and Hoodie are coming from at all. Ugh, it’s not like there wasn’t  _ enough _ drama and secrecy in her universe, and now she has to deal with another universe’s shit?

_ Definitely _ above her pay grade.

Miniwing gives Damian an unimpressed look. “You didn’t steal anything? So Robin is the name that  _ you _ came up with, and a costume that  _ you _ designed?” He throws his hands up angrily. “You don’t even know where it came from!”

“It came from you!” Damian snaps back. “Richard gave it to me! He made me Robin, and he designed the uniform for me and— and—”

He drops off.

Miniwing stares at Damian with big, blue eyes. Like the sky. There isn’t anything they hide. Her Dick, who has been trained with time and hurt and fear, can lie with every part of himself, but Steph can see that Miniwing hasn’t picked up that skill. His eyes still say everything. 

Damian pulls himself up to his full height, one of his hands bunched in his cape. “We were partners. I was his Robin,” he spits. “I will  _ not _ give it up.”

Jesus. This is a disaster. Steph kinda wants to wrap Damian up in a hug and tell him that his self worth isn’t tied to a mask and cape.

Blinking rapidly, Miniwing turns to look at Steph. Quiet, eyes narrowed, he asks “Alternate me really gave Robin away? To Dami?”

Something in his tone tells Steph that this question holds a lot of weight. Even if she has no clue what that weight is. She’s beginning to think that, despite having been in the mantle herself, she has no fucking idea about what Robin means. Maybe none of them do.

She nods, and says, “Yeah, he did.” She doesn’t mention any of the circumstances around it, which makes her feel a little like she’s betraying Tim, but it really won’t do any good to bring up. 

Also it’s a stupid argument, and she’s sick of it.

Miniwing stares at her, and then goes back to staring at Damian. Steph can’t tell what he’s thinking. 

The four of them are silent for a few moments. Steph can see Hoodie trying to catch Miniwing’s gaze, but he seems like he’s in pretty deep thought. Steph attempts to meet Damian’s gaze as well, but all he does is stare resolutely at the ground. 

Steph sighs. 

Finally, after what feels like  _ ages,  _ Miniwing breaks the silence. Putting his hands on his hips, he says, “Some of my friends call me Rob or Robbie.” 

He’s not looking at Damian, but Damian is looking at him. 

“What are you saying?” Damian’s tone is harsh, but there’s confusion bled into it. Confusion, and maybe relief.

“I’m saying,” Miniwing—or, Steph guesses she should be saying Rob now—says with a huff, “that I am very  _ generously _ letting you keep  _ my  _ hero identity for the night, and you’re fucking welcome.”

A smile on her face, Hoodie says, “Jar,” 

Rob rolls his eyes at Hoodie. “Whatever,” he says, “let’s just go. We’re wasting time here,”

Hoodie just smiles even wider. She turns to Steph, who’s slowly beginning to grin as well. 

“Lead the way?”

Lead the way, huh? Well. Steph can sure try. She claps her hands together, and says, “Alright, with me, everyone.”

She swings herself back onto her motorcycle and waits until Damian hops on behind her. She revs the engine. Next to them, Rob is leaning forward to whisper something in Hoodie’s ear, making her laugh. It reminds Steph that she has something to say to Damian as well.

Before they head off and the wind can steal her words, Steph leans back and says, “You better thank Rob at some point tonight,”

Damian huffs. “You are not my mother,” he says snidely.

“And thank god for that,” Steph snorts. She guns it before Damian can answer.

* * *

The night turns out to be an average patrol in the Narrows for the most part. That of course means that it’s fucking awful, and Steph has no idea why she agreed to be assigned here, and the next time she sees Nightwing she’s going to end his life for suggesting they take this area. 

It’s tiring and gruelling: one of those patrols that makes Steph wonder why she doesn’t just quit and go become a pastry chef or a middle school soccer coach. Neither of those jobs pay very well, she supposes, but it’s also not like she gets paid for vigilante work, so! Either way she’s a sucker.

At least she’s not alone. It’s the one redeeming fact about the night, actually. Maybe, had Steph been less cold and less tired and less annoyed at the general state of the world—seriously, how many people think that broken bottles are good weapons? This isn’t a film noir!—she’d even admit that this fact sometimes outweighed the negatives.

After all, she’s been treated to Rob’s entire apparent encyclopedia’s worth of terrible jokes. He’s a genius. She’s always known that Nightwing is funny and witty and talkative so on and so forth, but Rob just goes and does not stop  _ going. _

The best part? It’s driving Damian up the wall. Even if the jokes had been terrible, though some of them kind of are, the reactions that Damian gives to each quip and punchline are enough to justify the corniness. He’s  _ so mad. _ And, to Steph’s continuing delight, while Damian isn’t usually afraid to make his feelings very, very clear, he’s evidently developed some kind of respect and sense of kinship with Rob, and this seems to stop him from reacting badly. All he does is blink in disbelief at Rob, and sometimes send Steph distressed looks.

It’s bliss. Steph is in adorable-little-brother induced bliss. She’s going to steal Rob and keep him here forever. 

She doesn’t recognize how obvious she’s being about that feeling until Hoodie comes up beside her when they’re walking along a series of bridges and nudges her in the shoulder.

“You’re not allowed to keep him,” she says, faintly grinning at Steph. It’s clear that Steph is being made fun of a little, but honestly? It’s not like anybody who’s met Rob can judge. He’s brilliant. Steph wants to keep him so bad.

“Are you sure you don’t want to trade?” Steph asks, just as Damian growls something about cutting the dark root of crime out of Gotham in Rob’s direction. Rob just cackles in response.

Hoodie turns to look at Damian, and then looks back at Steph with her eyes raised. “Would you?” she asks.

No, Steph wouldn’t, but that’s mostly because she’s more attached to Damian than she likes to let on. At least, more than she likes to let on to people who don’t understand the unique cocktail of protectiveness-frustration-adoration that Damian tends to inspire in the adults in his life. 

Wait. Oh god. Is Steph an  _ adult  _ in his life?

She’s so busy trying not to panic about being an adult figure to somebody that she doesn’t realize the silence has stretched on to awkward,  _ awkward _ lengths. Who had been the last person to say something? Had it been Steph? It… it hadn’t been Steph, had it?

Steph looks up at Hoodie, who’s blatantly smirking now. Yup. Definitely hadn’t been Steph. Well. That probably answers the  _ adult figure _ thing.

She smiles sheepishly at Hoodie, and racks her brain for something to say. What’s something they have in common? There’s a bunch of obvious stuff, but most of that stuff is also deeply depressing, so Steph should probably avoid that. What would two alternate universe versions of each other normally talk about? More importantly, what kind of stupid question is that to be asking herself?

Before she can think about it too deeply, Steph blurts out, “So, are you and Oracle—your Oracle, that is—dating?”

Hoodie looks at her. 

She snorts. 

“No,” she says. “Fuck no.”

Steph’s not sure what response she had been expecting, but such blatant derision hadn’t been that high up on her list. 

Then again, she kinda gets it. Her response if somebody had asked her if she and Tim were dating now would probably be about the same. Maybe with more laughing. A lot more laughing.

Okay, yeah, Steph can’t judge.

As she comes to this conclusion, Hoodie seems to be going through some kind of revelation of her own. There’s a considering... almost… concerned? look on her face. Steph raises her eyebrows. 

In the blink of an eye, Hoodie steps quite far into Steph’s personal space.

“He’s gay,” Hoodie says, peering at Steph with a slight frown. “He’s like, very gay. Has he figured that out yet?”

Steph stares at her.

“Um,” she says, blinking rapidly. “I don’t know why you think I have access to that information.”

Hoodie’s frown becomes more pronounced. They’ve stopped walking now, which means this is now a Conversation, Capital C, which is concerning, and they’re still in the middle of patrol, which is also concerning, and still in the middle of the  _ Narrows, _ which is even more concerning. Then, Steph’s brain catches up with this discussion, and oh. Oh wow.  _ Wow. _ Tim is gay.

Hoodie continues, “It’s very important to me that he knows that he’s gay. It explains literally everything about his interpersonal relationships.”

Yes. Yes it does. Holy shit.

“Holy shit,” Steph says, “my-ex boyfriend is gay.”

They’re both silent for a bit. Steph is processing. She’s processing a lot.

Hoodie pats her on the shoulder. “Join the club,” she says. “God knows what we saw in that repressed little motherfucker,”

The leftovers of Steph’s love and loyalty to Tim, which are quite a bit, make her say, “Aw, he was pretty cute back then.”

Hoodie scoffs. “Don’t lie,” she replies, but there’s a soft and affectionate smile on her face all the same. Ah, classic Red Hood emotional avoidance. Maybe Steph would be better under the helmet then she thinks.

Then again, she’s also very disinterested in being under the helmet, so this is a pointless train of thought. 

The two Robins have noticed them trailing behind by now, and are predictably being loud and annoying about it. Steph and Hoodie make mutually exasperated, if fond, eye contact, and start walking again. At least this time around, the silence is considerably more comfortable. Steph guesses there’s nothing that brings people together like… well… like being the same person. Or mostly the same. 

Just before they catch up to the other two, Hoodie leans over and quietly says, “Wait, you know that  _ you _ like girls, right?”

This time, it’s Steph snorting incredulously.

“Yes,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I knew.”

Hoodie grins. “Just checking!”

Steph elbows her in the side, laughing.

That, of course, is when the night goes from mildly not awful to absolutely fucking terrible.

* * *

Ten or so minutes later, Steph and Hoodie and the two Robins are in the Clocktower. Batman, Batgirl, Oracle Tim and Knight are here already, as well as Babs.

Nightwing and Shadow aren’t here, and Steph would wonder why, but she gets the answer to that question pretty quickly.

“We received this video transmission around eleven minutes ago,” Batman is saying, motioning up to the screen. On it is Ra’s Al Ghul’s ugly fucking face.

Steph hates that motherfucker.

They watch the entire video through. Because this is Ra’s, it’s 70% posturing and pretention and passive-aggression, but the point of the video boils down to this: 

Somehow, Ra’s has figured out they have alternate versions of themselves running around. And he wants a ‘family dinner’ with Shadow. Apparently Rook and Red Robin are  _ incentives _ for alternate Damian, but the message is clear enough. It’s a trade. 

Steph  _ hates _ that motherfucker.

When the video replay is done and the screen goes black, Hoodie is the first one to speak.

“We can’t let Shadow know.”

Knight and Rob both nod.

“Agreed,” Oracle Tim says. “We keep him as far away as humanly possible.”

Batman purses his lips at them. “Is that wise?” he asks. 

Hoodie narrows her eyes at him. “What grounds exactly,” she asks, standing up, “do you have to question us? I get that this isn’t really a problem yet for you guys in this universe, but if Damian finds out, the end result is Ra’s drinking Damian’s youth or possessing him or whatever the fuck it is that being his ‘heir’ means, because he’s going to stick a bow on his head and deliver himself to Ra’s fucking  _ doorstep. _ He doesn’t know. End of.”

Steph shoots a look at Damian,  _ her _ Damian, and finds him staring at Hoodie. 

Fuck.  _ Fuck. _

Batman opens his mouth again, but Oracle Tim cuts him off.

“She  _ said _ end of,” he says coldly. “We aren’t telling Shadow. Or Nightwing. We can get Rook and Red Robin back without them.”

Batman seems to decide to shut up after hearing that, which is good, because Steph can see the look on Knight’s face. She’s pretty sure if Bruce had kept pressing the point, it’d have been Knight speaking up next. And none of them are equipped to deal with the fallout of Bruce getting yelled at by Cass. Any version of Cass.

Babs wheels herself to the whiteboard. “Okay then. No Nightwing or Shadow,” she says. “What’s the plan?”

Oracle Tim gives the room a once-over. His gaze stops, very briefly, on Damian. Robin Damian, who blinks under his scrutiny.

“I think,” Oracle Tim says, “that we need somebody to go to Nightwing and Shadow. Keep them occupied.”

Steph looks around. Everybody from the other universe seems to be in agreement over this. Steph gets the feeling, though, that some people from her universe don’t feel the same. Steph included, maybe.

Hm. 

Rob stands up. “I’ll go,” he says. He seems to anticipate that everybody would have opinions on that, because he continutes without a pause, “It makes the most sense if I do. Shadow and I are partners. He’s going to think it’s weird if anybody else shows up to join, but we patrol together every day. He won’t think twice about me showing up.”

They all take that in. It’s a good point. It’s kinda weird, really, to wrap her mind around the idea of a Robin who isn’t at Batman’s side, and a Dick Grayson who isn’t growing up in Gotham, but moments like this make Steph realize just how different it is. She had forgotten over the night that she could be questioning her counterpart about the differences between their universes. She doesn’t doubt that the others have been; she knows they’re all nosy as hell, but she had been pretty caught up in patrol. And gossiping. There had been a fair amount of gossiping.

Rob offers them all a small, half-hearted smile. “Plus, he likes me the most,” he adds.

Steph, and a few others, can’t help but snort amusedly at that. Different that universe may be, but some things never change.

Rolling his eyes, Oracle Tim says, “Alright, fair point. You can go keep the grouch company,” to which a few more people snort.

It’s only by virtue of sitting directly across from him that Steph notices that Damian doesn’t laugh. Or react at all.

He just stares at Rob, his expression carefully neutral: so neutral that Steph knows it has to be hiding something underneath the surface.

It takes a moment for it to click into place for Steph.

Oh, Damian.

Steph’s about to reach out, maybe see if Damian would put up with some of her patented reassuring-but-not-overbearing shoulder pats or knee rubs, when Rob comes up and pokes him in the eat.

Damian and Steph both look up at Rob in surprise. 

“What are you doing?” Rob asks. “Get up?”

Damian blinks at him. “What?” he asks, his voice quiet.

Rob tilts his head. “Aren’t you coming? It is Shadow  _ and _ Nightwing, y’know,”

Damian turns away from Rob, his expression blank again. “No,” he says, his jaw set stubbornly. “Nightwing and I… aren’t partners anymore. Not like you and Shadow.”

_ Oh, Damian. _ Reassuring-but-not-overbeating shoulder pats or knee rubs have been upgraded to reassuring-and-somewhat-smothering bear hugs.

Rob makes a face, and pokes Damian again. “Really?” he says, sounding skeptical. 

Damian scowls at him briefly, batting away his hand. “Really,” he snaps back, sounding a little frustrated now. Steph feels like she should tell Rob to back off. This really isn’t a bruise to be pressing on, and she feels like things could escalate from here very quickly, and very badly.

Rob scoffs. Steph’s just about psyched herself up to tell the kid to take a hike and face the wrath of all of his older siblings, when he says, “Well, you’re  _ my _ partner, aren’t you? So come on. We’re wasting time.”

Oh, nevermind, Steph is going to  _ adopt him. _

Damian stares at Rob with big, vulnerable eyes. 

Rob rolls his eyes and pulls Damian up by his arm. Damian, surprisingly, goes compliantly. He doesn’t even say anything. The silence would be a little unnerving if it wasn’t fucking adorable.

Steph… well, how else can she react? She starts to grin.  _ Both _ Damian and Rob are getting a bear hug from her at some point tonight.

Once he’s done pulling Damian out of his seat, Rob relocates his grip on Damian’s upper arm to around his wrist. He pulls Damian along until they reach the map of Gotham on Babs’ monitor, and with his free hand he points up at two dots on the screen.

“That them?” he asks Babs.

Hiding a smile, she nods at the two Robins. “That’s them,” she confirms. “They seem to be on the move, so you’ll have to hurry,”

Rob rolls his eyes. “Like Dami and I aren’t faster than those two old men,” he says. He lets go of Damian’s wrist, and turns to look at him. “Let’s go?”

Damian looks down at his wrist, and then up at Rob. He still looks a bit bewildered, but he gives Rob a tiny smile.

“Let’s go,” he repeats. Rob grins at him. 

He turns to wave at everyone else in the room, and then he’s pulling himself out of the window and out of sight.

Just before he leaves, Damian looks around the room as well. He doesn’t wave, but he does nod at all of them: a quick, excited tilting of his head. 

Then he’s gone, leaving behind a room full of delighted vigilantes. 

Steph, out of the corner of her eye, sees Batman turning away to hide the obvious smile on his face. She grins even harder.

They all sit and bask in the pleased atmosphere for a few moments longer, and then Hoodie stands up. 

Unable to hide the smile on her face, even when she’s shaking her head, Hoodie says, “Come on. Let’s go get the two idiots.”

Knight laughs softly. “Rook is going to be so mad he missed that,” she says.

It’s still an absolutely fucking terrible situation, and Steph’s still quite a fucking bit panicked over it, but she feels herself relax slightly all the same. They’ve managed to help each other out of every bad spot so far in her life, and this time, they’ve got a shitton of backup. 

It’ll be okay. They’ll get Tim back, and teach Damian the meaning of friendship, and bully Bruce into showing emotions, and all of those other important things that she’s always had on her to-do list. It’ll be okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will NEVER have good pacing in my writing. i promise this


	11. interlude ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone. humblest of apologies for the wait. i started uni again and then i moved house and then i was struck by a vicious, vicious creative block. then i remembered that the remedy to that is usually to write something incredibly stupid.
> 
> so have this short interlude. it is incredibly stupid. next chapter will come when it comes but i hope for ur sake and mine it comes soon. thanks for reading! stay safe!

Lian clears her throat.

“Begin logbook entry,” she says, speaking casually into her headset. “Reporting in from hour five of Subject #1, codename Shadow, being missing. All agents have just reconvened. Hopes are dwindling. Agent #3, codename Terrapin, is verging on nervous breakdown. Agent #2, codename Phoeni—”

“What are you doing?” Irey asks, her face in her hands.

Lian shrugs.

“Updating the logbook,” she says. “For posterity. What if Shadow comes back and wants to know what kind of hardships we endured while trying to save him?”

“I don’t think he needs an hourly play-by-play of Terrapin’s descent into nervous breakdown,” Irey replies, her face still in her hands.

Colin makes a vaguely wounded noise. “I’m _fine,”_

Irey decides that she should probably look up now, which is a mistake. It gives her an unfettered view of Lian’s next move.

With a gasp, Lian puts a hand over her mouth. “Are you implying that Shadow does not care about Terrapin’s wellbeing, Phoenix? I’ll have you know there _is_ a heart in that chest of his! Deep, deep down it may be, but it’s there!”

Irey should’ve just kept her face in her hands.

“Why,” Colin says, seemingly directed not towards anybody in the vicinity, but at the universe at large. Irey understands.

It had been her night off. That should’ve been the first warning, really, because it’s always _her_ nights off that get interrupted by stupid shit. Lian and Colin and Damian can do whatever it is they do—knowing them, it’s probably just crime-fighting but in a different city—when they’re off roster in peace, yet when Irey tries to have a nice night in with her pets, she’s immediately dragged into some bullshit.

Honestly, how does one go about losing _not only_ a vigilante who has years and years of experience, but the rest of his family as well? How is it that six different people can go off the radar without so much as a clue left behind to their whereabouts? 

The implications of every bad decision that has to have been made in the course of the night prior to her joining hurt her head.

Or maybe that’s just because she’s spent the last two hours in Gotham, a city which she’s convinced long-term exposure to actively destroys your frontal cortex. 

God, she hates this place. 

“God, I hate this place,” she says. She scowls at a gargoyle sitting on the gate to the park they’re in. Who the fuck puts a gargoyle on the gate to a _park?_

Colin nods. “It’s honestly worse than I remembered it.”

Lian pats them both on the shoulder. “Chin up, guys,” she says. “At least Batman’s off-world!”

Excellent argument made. Point to Lian.

 _At least Batman’s off-world._ Irey can't imagine the kind of shitstorm that would occur if Bruce were in Gotham and found the three of them lurking around. Even without Irey committing the all-time sin of existing in Gotham and being metahuman, Bruce and Lian have never gotten along a day in their life. Something about Bats and Arrows. Irey wouldn’t know. After all, the Flashes don’t go around making enemies within their own ranks.

“At least he would’ve been able to help us,” Colin points out sadly. 

Lian scoffs. “We can do everything he can do, and there’s three of us,” she says. “The only thing he has over us is a cave equipped with fancy technology.”

That statement is met with a speculative silence.

Irey thinks it through. She turns it over in her head. She really, deeply interrogates the possibility.

The facts are this: the only thing they don’t have right now is a cave full of technology made specifically for detective stuff. Batman is off-world. All of the other representative vigilantes of Gotham have disappeared.

Added up, all of these point to one thing. The Cave is empty.

“The Cave is empty,” she says.

Colin crosses his arms. “We couldn’t.”

Lian crosses her arms too. “It’s not like we haven’t done it before. I vote yes.”

Feeling left out, Irey also crosses her arms. The three of them stand like in their vague triangle, arms crossed, facing each other, and stare one another down.

“We don’t really have another option,” Irey says. “I also vote yes.

Lian nods. Irey nods back.

They both turn to Colin.

He rolls his eyes and groans. “Fine. _Fine._ I guess I vote yes. Let’s break into Batman’s creepy underground lair. Why not.”

Lian throws an arm around Irey and Colin. “Don't you guys love being heroes?” she says, completely devoid of feeling. “Yay. Next stop, the Cave.”

“Where good men go to die,” Irey intones.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [places my hands on your shoulders and looks you directly in the eye] i dont know how to write jason todd.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is  _ not _ a pattern—it can be, and usually is, but that’s not how the saying actually goes. 

The original quote is this:  _ Three times is enemy action. _

Jason’s no Bond, and definitely isn’t looking to be, but he can appreciate the wisdom in the words nonetheless. 

He’s willing to dismiss stumbling across one wall with a suspiciously familiar sigil painted on it as happenstance. After all, it’s so faded in both physicality and in his memory that it takes him a moment to place. When he does eventually recognize it from that unfortunate time a witch had tried to take over Gotham and then sent him, along with the rest of his clownhouse family, hurtling through dimensions, he goes from willing to downright  _ enthusiastic  _ about dismissing it. 

So dismiss it he does. 

The second time raises some alarm bells. Only some. It’s not quite all the way there; it comes in the form of a tattered piece of paper that crosses his path, and since it’s been ripped up, Jason can’t actually tell whether or not it  _ is _ the sigil in question. It’s just a fragment. Enough to raise suspicion, but also innocent enough that it could be a coincidence. Maybe it’s a piece of some edgy band’s poster, or some Satanist group’s flyer. Jason just can’t say for sure.

So, with narrowed eyes, he writes it off as a coincidence.

The third time, however, he has to face it. Faded paint and torn paper? Those he can look over. Those are subtle. Almost tasteful in their execution. Easily navigating that thin line between suspicion and paranoia. 

But... a recreation of the sigil done in blood and placed directly in front of the place where he parked his motorcycle?

Tasteless. Gaudy. Frankly, unoriginal. 

Jason comes to three very quick conclusions about the situation. One, he’s being taunted. Two, the person who’s taunting him is an asshole.

Three: it’s enemy action. 

Jason has a resurfaced witch on his hands.

He smears a bit of the blood underneath his boot. He’s almost certain it’s not human; from what he remembers of last time, the witch had been rather… nonviolent. No deaths. Hadn’t even caused any injuries, and her way of getting rid of him in their confrontation had been entirely bloodless. Sure, her modus operandi had been something to do with causing misery and feeding off of pain, but Jason’s pretty certain that she’s as close to pacifistic as a villain can get. 

She had probably bought the blood from a butcher or something. He rolls his eyes. Even the  _ evil _ people in Gotham can’t be normal about it.

He steps a little closer, examining the sigil with more scrutiny. The blood is fairly fresh, ergo recently painted. Done with care and meticulousness. It’s no simple thing, either; there’s  _ detail _ in this sigil, and Jason can see that the witch had taken enough time that some of it had started to dry by the time she finished. After attempting to smudge some more sections, he surmizes that she started in the top left corner and worked her way around clockwise.

He almost has to admire the ridiculous amount of effort put into what is essentially a fancy way of flipping him the bird. That’s dedication, right there.

Especially since she’s now alerted him to her presence, and is going to get her ass kicked just like last time.

Rolling his eyes, he turns his attention to the fresher part of the sigil. He kneels down next to it and in doing so, catches a bit of the sigil that’s been smeared, even though he hasn’t gone near it. Hm. A careless mistake on the witch’s part, maybe? He doubts that it had been some random Gotham citizen passing by, though he can’t fully rule out the possibility. Most people living in this city would probably be unfazed by a random blood painting on the ground. Minding their own business, and all.

He unclips a blood tracking flashlight from his belt and looks for any footsteps or residue left behind. He’s pretty sure there won’t be, since the smudge is barely noticeable, and as he scans the area he’s proven right. There’s no sign of which way the witch went. Hell, if Jason’s unlucky enough, she might be watching him right at this moment, waiting for the perfect time to strike.

He rolls his eyes, big and exaggerated so that if she is around, she can see how  _ done _ he is with this.

Just to be a dick, he kicks at some of the blood and smears the sigil. 

If the witch is around, he’ll need to at least look vaguely like he’s off-guard to try and lure her out. If she isn’t, he’ll need to look further into the situation to try and find out where she headed to.

Combined, these two possibilities point to one solution: Jason needs to talk to Oracle. He doesn’t particularly want to, especially after that cryptic as shit conversation from earlier, but she can provide both information and a reason for Jason to loiter around here.

Sighing, he taps on Babs’ contact on his gauntlet and waits to be put through.

_ “Calling me twice in one night?” _ comes the response. _ “It must be my birthday.” _

“You called that first time,” Jason says dryly. “Actually, you didn’t even call. You just opened the line and made me talk to you,”

_ “And I’m sure it was the highlight of your night,” _ Babs replies. Huh. Interesting. Jason thinks he can hear some strain in her voice.  _ “Now, what do you need from the all-seeing Oracle?” _

He leans against the wall. “Say, O Oracle,” he murmurs, rolling his shoulders. “You sound a little stressed, there. Am I calling at a bad time?”

He doesn’t particularly try to sound like a goading asshole, but that is how it comes out, he must admit. Even to his own ears.

_ “Don’t make me turn the voice mod on. And, since you care so much, yes, Hood. It’s not the best time.” _

Jason shifts on his feet, turning his head slightly to try and catch a glance at something flashing nearby.

“What, one of the kids in trouble?” he asks, keeping his tone neutral. Hm. It’s just a dropped bottle catching the light. He moves on.

Babs hesitates, just slightly, before responding.  _ “Something like that.” _

She doesn’t offer any more information, nor sounds like she’s trying to wait him out, so Jason concludes that somebody else is already on the job. Thus, he’s not going to get asked. Which is good.

“Right,” he moves on. He supposes he’s a  _ little _ curious, but he’s got his own shit to deal with. “Anyway. I’ll make this quick, then. Can you check the cameras around my location right now? Going back about an hour.”

Jason had parked his bike in a blind spot for obvious reasons, so there would be no way to catch the perpetrator in the act, but he can still canvas anybody who went in and out of the area.

Babs hums, and then all there is to do is wait. Jason rests one of his hands on his holster. It’s a good, comfortable weight at his side. 

After a while, Babs makes a quiet, almost dissatisfied sound.

_ “Hm,” _ she says.  _ “Nobody’s been near there since you first showed up.” _

Jason clicks his tongue. “There’s no activity at all?”

Babs falls silent again. Jason fancies that, if he strains, he can hear her clicking away in the background. Considering that Oracle’s comms setup is probably some of the best that money and intense hacking can get you, it’s not likely, but hey. He’s bored.

_ “There’s… something,” _ Babs murmurs after a bit.  _ “I don’t know. I thought it was a glitch at first, but it’s almost a… hm, a patch of negative space?” _

Jason grins, straightening up. “Bingo,” he says. “I’m dealing with a witch, you see. She probably has some way of masking herself.”

_ “You didn’t think to tell me that at the start of this conversation?” _

“Need-to-know basis, Oracle. Can you tell where she headed off to?”

Babs huffs.  _ “I think she headed down Cinnabar Street. I can try to track her more, if you want, but it’s not going to be very conclusive.” _

Jason hums. “Could you do a scan for magical energy or residue?”

_ “You know I don’t have the tech for that,” _

“But,” Jason counters, “you do have the tech to hack into the Batcave, which  _ does _ have the tech for that.”

Babs gives the huff that signifies that she’s amused, and falls silent again.

This time it takes a little longer, which is understandable. Jason doesn’t mind the wait, honestly. He begins to fiddle with the cover for his gauntlet; it’s been jamming occasionally when opening. Nothing too bad, yet, but he should do the maintenance sooner rather than later. From what he can tell at the moment, there seems to be a problem with the screws. An easy fix.

Over the comm, Babs clears her throat.  _ “The traces are strongest around the railway station, from what I can tell.” _

She pauses, and Jason obligingly waits for her to continue.

_ “She’s a magic user, Hood,” _ she continutes. She sounds stressed for an altogether different reason, now. Jason knows this tone. It’s the  _ Jason Todd, all the decisions you make are bad decisions _ tone. Wholly ineffective, honestly. Jason’s built up immunity to it.  _ “Are you sure you want to go into this without backup?”  _

Jason snorts. “I have backup,”

_ “Do you now?” _

Jason looks at one of the holsters sitting on his belt. “I have my gun,” he says. He looks at the other one. “And my other gun.”

The all-seeing Oracle gives an all-fed-up sigh.

_ “You won’t accept any help, will you?” _

“Nope,” Jason answers cheerfully. He revs his engine. A crow that had been sitting on a powerline nearby flies off. How dramatic.

Babs sighs again, and this time, Jason can tell she’s a little amused.  _ “Be careful, then.” _

Jason rolls his shoulders and revs up his engine one last time, getting his bike running smoothly. He pushes off of the ground.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he replies dryly. “I’ve died already,”

With one last sigh, Babs hangs up the call. 

Jason finds himself grinning. 

* * *

Jason cruises down the road, on high alert for any magic bullshit. His engine silencer is off because at this point, he’s not interested in subtlety anymore. The witch is trying to bait him out. It’s no longer about being sneaky. It’s about whoever makes the first move.

Jason, coincidentally, is a man of action. 

So he roars down the street towards the railway, running the mental logistics in his head of a magic fight in a train station. The actual interiors of the places tend to be a maze, despite the simplistic concept; that could go either in his favour or very strongly against him. Getting pushed onto the tracks themselves is another issue altogether. The combination of open air and magical combatants tends to turn out badly for whoever’s combating, but there is also the slim possibility that Jason could nail her with an approaching train, which would catapult him to meteoric levels of badass and ensure that nobody would ever be able to tell him  _ shit, _ again.

Decisions, decisions.

The rattle of the railway is in earshot when he decides to pull over and park. He chooses another secluded corner and secures his bike tightly, because even though he doesn’t object to the idea of having to go home using early morning public transport on the off-chance that his bike gets stolen—the Red Hood is a hero of the fucking people and supports environmental activism—he gets the feeling that he and this witch might end up in a high-speed chase or two.

After that, he checks his guns. Rolls his shoulders. Considers the possibility that the witch isn’t in the railway, but, whatever. He’s come this far, and if it was the place with the strongest magic reading, it’s pretty fucking likely. From what he remembers, she’d been upfront about confrontation as well, and the step from  _ blood sigils in front of your stuff  _ to  _ battle in abandoned buildings _ is a fairly small one. 

He picks the lock of one of the service entrances, and lets himself in. 

On high alert, he creeps through the rooms and lobbies. 

His visor’s switched to heat-mapping now, but apart from the pigeons nesting in the ceiling and one person manning the operating booth on the second level, there’s nobody around at all. At least, nobody inside.

Well, fuck. Open air and magical combatants, here he comes.

He slips out onto one of the platforms. The schedule hung on the entrance tells him that the cargo trains usually arrive on the hour, and Jason spends about fifteen seconds wondering whether the witch would be dramatic enough to make her entrance to a fight on top of a cargo train, before remembering that this is Gotham: most of the weirdos in this city would consider that  _ baseline _ dramatics.

And he's right. The next train comes after three minutes, and it does bring somebody with it.

Not the person he expects, however. God forbid anything in his life ever be predictable.

Instead of a witch descending to fight him in one-on-one combat, a figure leaps off of the train as it passes. In the low light of the moon, Jason watches as they put out their hand in free-fall, and then hear the  _ clink _ of a grapple meeting brick a few seconds later. 

Oh, no.

To make matters worse, Jason watches as a  _ second _ figure—two of them!—leaps off of the train as well. Again, they grapple and they swing, and the two both land on the opposite platform. 

To his now considerable regret, Jason hadn’t bothered to hide for his expected confrontation with the witch. They spot him immediately. He sees a flash of blue and, well, it's  _ over. _

"Hood?" Nightwing calls, looking both ways before crossing the track. When he reaches the other platform, he vaults himself up and does a flip as he goes.

His companion, who Jason now realizes he doesn't recognise, follows in a much calmer manner.

Jason squints at both of them.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he asks Nightwing, because the last time Jason had checked, he had been firmly shacked up in Bludhaven. "And who the fuck is that?" he adds, because the  _ other  _ last time Jason had checked, Gotham was not accepting new vigilantes.

Nightwing raises his eyebrows at Jason.

"Don't be rude," he chides, because he's an asshole. "This is one of our guests."

The other person nods at Jason. 

Jason almost wants to take off his helmet, so he can fully express how lost he is.

"We take guests in Gotham now?" he retorts. "Because, if that's the case, I'm moving out."

Nightwing and the other person look at each other, and then turn back to Jason.

"Come on, Hood. It's Shadow. Remember?" Nightwing says, amused.

Shadow? Shadow… Jason runs the word through his memory, recognition flickering now that he has a name to put to the uniform. 

Not the guy who was Riddler's assistant a few months ago, that was The Shade. Not anybody from the JL. Somebody closer to home, then? One of the Titans? One of the Birds of Prey? One of…

One of…

"The one from the alternate dimension?" Jason demands, clarity striking him. "The…  _ the kid? _ But old? What the fuck is he doing here?"

Nightwing and Shadow look at each other again. 

Jason stares at them both, the cogs in his head turning. For fuck’s sake. He looks away from that stupid Batcave for  _ five seconds _ and this happens. Nobody had even bothered to inform him!

Wait.

_ Wait. _

Nightwing crosses his arms. "You didn't check the group chat," he accuses.

Jason’s going to kill Oracle.

"I like to pretend it doesn't exist," he snaps back. He can’t believe her! She didn’t even— but, she kind of did— but she sort of didn’t and—  _ ugh. Ugh. _

He can't see Nightwing's eyes, but Jason can tell that he's rolling them when he turns back to Shadow.

"And he complains that we don't tell him anything," Nightwing says, shaking his head. Shadow tuts in sympathy.

"Children," he says, shaking his head too. Yup. It's definitely that weirdo older Damian from that one incredibly ill-advised dimension traveling trip they had all gone on. Deja vu sneaks up on Jason, and viciously stabs him in the back.

Jason looks rapidly between the two. "Is it just him?"

"We are all present," Shadow replies, sounding too amused for Jason’s liking. "You should really check the group chat."

"You guys have one too, right?" Nightwing asks as Jason scowls and pulls out his phone. 

"Of course."

With great disdain, he opens the encrypted chat app that Oracle and Dick had coded.

"What's it called?"

He sees the unread message count, numbering in the hundreds, and scowls even more.

"I believe at the moment it is called the Batman Fanclub. It changes fairly regularly."

Flicking up his screen, he scrolls to the last read message. 

"Oh, that's  _ good.  _ Ours is called the Wayne Orphans Committee."

He realizes that his last read message had actually been from last week, and has to scroll forward until he reaches the messages from today. Fucking hell.

**wayne orphans committee**

**[20:12] eggplant emoji** **  
** HEY BITCHES **  
** GUESS FUCKING WHO?   
[IMG]

**[20:12] dayleg** **  
** ??????????????   
NO WAY

**[20:12] beloved fast food chain** **  
** Wtf   
We leave u alone in the cave for like 10 minutes!??!?!!?

**[20:13] bat emoji** **  
** 😲🙊🤯🤨🤩

**[20:13] dayleg** **  
** how   
and why   
and also how

**[20:13] eggplant emoji** **  
** idk how or why they just showed up and pinged me on comms   
were vibing in the cave now

**[20:13] beloved fast food chain** **  
** Cass and I lose the bet to go get pre-patrol snacks one fucking time…

**[20:13] bat emoji** **  
** 😢😢😢   
say hi 4️⃣ me

**[20:13] dayleg** **  
** isn’t @DW home w u?

**[20:13] eggplant emoji** **  
** lol   
hes mad bc i didnt tie them up   
hes upstairs

**[20:13] DW** **  
** They tied us up.

**[20:13] beloved fast food chain** **  
** Yea when they DIDNT KNOW WHO WE WERE

**[20:13] DW** **  
** Double standards, is all I’m saying

**[20:14] bat emoji** **  
** lol

**[20:14] eggplant emoji** **  
** wtevr tying them up is boring   
u all better get home ASAP   
batrave in the batcave in 15 

**[20:14] bat emoji** **  
** **✈️✈️✈️** 🔜🔜🔜🏃🏃🏃

**[20:14] dayleg** **  
** batrave lmaoooo   
im omw   
be there in 60   
actually you know what. make it 50

**[20:14] eggplant emoji** **  
** yes king break those traffic laws

**[20:14] DW** **  
** Will you be coming on patrol?   
Alternatively the intruders will probably need to be watched over   
Which we could do   
If you’re staying

**[20:14] beloved fast food chain** **  
** You cant see it but im rolling my eyes   
Tell em @bat emoji

**[20:14] bat emoji** **  
** hes rolling his eyes   
🙄🙄🙄

**[20:14] beloved fast food chain** **  
** Exactly like that

**[20:14] dayleg** **  
** aw sure baby bird   
i’ll stay   
patrol sounds good

**[20:14] DW** **  
** 😼

**[20:15] beloved fast food chain** **  
** 🙄

When Jason looks up from his phone again, he’s horrified to find that he’s verging on a smile. What the  _ fuck. _

“Caught up now?” Nightwing asks, drawing Jason’s attention back to the two unwelcome drop-ins. 

Nightwing’s grinning. Shadow is too, albeit a little more reserved. It might actually be worse than the unabashed grin, because all Jason can sense from that smile is judgement, and he does not need to be judged by  _ Damian Wayne, _ alternate version or no.

“Whatever,” Jason mutters, rolling his eyes. “How many bozos we have running around here doesn’t affect me anyway.”

He turns away, getting ready to do another sweep of the place. Most likely, Nightwing and Shadow showing up had pushed the witch back into hiding; he’s less certain of a confrontation now, and more certain of a night poking around in dark corners until he finds something. Not all that appealing, but the work must get done. Jason fucked up with this witch once. He’s not going to do it again.

He hopes, against hope, that Nightwing and Shadow will leave him to it and go back to whatever it was they were doing. He has no particular interest in hanging out with the guys who seem to have jumping off of trains as a hobby, and that’s even  _ before _ he factors in the implications of patrolling with his older brother and— well, technically his younger brother, but also his older brother. Ugh. This is confusing. Whatever.

Decisively, Jason starts walking away.

Of course, as the world is in the habit of denying Jason anything he wants, none of what he wants to happen happens.

“Hey,” Nightwing calls. “Where are you going?”

Maybe if he offers as little information as possible. Jason jerks his head. “Where does it look? I have a job to do.”

“What?” Nightwing presses. “You working on a case?” He takes a step closer.

From the way Shadow straightens up, he’s interested as well. 

It hits Jason, then: with double the amount of vigilantes in Gotham, there’s half of the work to be doing in a regular patrol. Which, from a normal perspective, is a good thing. However, not one person in this family is normal.

He can’t say for sure, but Jason thinks he might have two bored, or at least restless, vigilantes on his hands. 

He takes a step back.

He crosses his arms.

“Don’t you two have something to do?” he asks irritably. 

Nightwing and Shadow exchange glances. Shadow hasn’t been talking as much as Nightwing, probably because he and Jason aren’t as familiar with each other, but he’s the one who responds to that.

“Other than annoying our little brother?” Shadow asks, mouth spreading into an indulgent grin. 

Jason bristles. “I am not  _ your _ little brother,”

He almost follows up with  _ I’m not  _ anybody’s _ little brother, _ but with Nightwing standing right there, grinning at him as well, Jason finds the words drying up in his throat. This, inexplicably, only serves to irritate him more. 

Shadow doesn’t seem perturbed by Jason’s prickliness in the slightest. His grin sharpens, setting off Jason’s alarms almost faster than hearing the  _ swoosh _ of a certain cape does. He never really bothered to consider exactly what the results of Damian Wayne, spoiled brat extraordinare, being the first child of the bunch would be—so sue him, he’s not invested in figuring out the intricacies of a universe that basically rearranges his whole stupid life and offers a version of himself that’s probably better than him in every way—but it’s hitting him now. 

And it’s hitting hard. Jason takes another step back. 

He’s planning out escape routes in his head and considering how pathetic he’s willing to be versus how desperate he is to not be in this situation, when the night takes a turn for the worse.  _ Again.  _ Because  _ of course. _

In the distance, somebody shouts  _ there they are! _

There’s the distinctive sound of grapples shooting through the air and lodging into brick. Jason, Nightwing and Shadow all turn towards the source of the sound, and watch as two colourful blurs fly through the air towards them.

Two Robins— _ two fucking Robins _ —land a little ways away from them. One, Jason recognizes as Damian. The other takes him off guard. Logically, he knows that it’s alternate Dick, but Jason lays eyes on the kid and it takes him right back to being young, desperately running through the streets, wondering if there was anybody flying above. He’s looks like something straight out of the past. The first, the newest and shiniest, the brightest Robin. 

Jason can’t identify the feeling that rushes through him, but it leaves him drowning, nonetheless. 

“Robin?” Nightwing and Shadow say at the same time, as the two kids straighten up from their landing positions. 

Dick—the Robin one—waves at them, then bounding over with the exact kind of energy and exuberance that Jason remembers Robin having, even in those later years. Damian follows, albeit at a more sedate pace.

“Red Hood!” Dick exclaims as he gets closer to Jason. Ridiculously, Jason feels like flinching. Before he gets any closer, though, Dick stops in his tracks, and turns to Damian. “Wait,” he says, very seriously, “do we like him?”

Even with the eyemask on, it’s easy to see the surprise on Damian’s face at being asked this. Dick doesn’t seem like he’s joking, however. He looks like he’s 100% serious about the enquiry. 

Damian’s expression turns considering, and he sends Jason a look.

“Hm,” he says. “No. We don’t.”

Dick takes this on board immediately. He scrunches up his nose, turns back to Jason, and in a tone significantly more disappointed, goes, “Oh, Red Hood.”

Nightwing snort-laughs, and devolves into a coughing fit intended to disguise said snort-laughing. Shadow bites back a grin.

Jason wonders what exactly he had done to offend the universe to warrant this kind of punishment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still havent done uni but ive reached the point where writing this fic is a way for me to procrastinate so <3 rip jason <3 hes got a big storm coming


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's this? an update that finally somewhat adheres to the weekly schedule!?!?!?

A few minutes after Timmy wakes up, some lackey comes to inform them that Ra’s will be along soon to greet them, and that they can make themselves comfortable, blah blah honoured guests etcetera blah blah. 

It’s the usual weird posturing from Ra’s, so Jason mostly tunes that shit the fuck out, but it does give him some valuable info. 

First: there’s a camera, or an audio recorder in this room—they wouldn’t have known when Timmy woke up otherwise. 

Second: Ra’s is just as insufferable in this universe. Though, he could’ve pretty easily guessed that. 

Leaving any consideration of insufferableness aside, however, there’s something about Ra’s behaviour that gives Jason pause. He can’t put his finger on it exactly. It’s just… the kidnapping in broad moonlight, the shoddy transport, the singular messenger… it all adds up to a very odd picture. 

It paints Ra’s as… well, as  _ careless, _ except it’s  _ Ra’s Al Ghul, _ who doesn’t do careless. He doesn’t do careless at all. So if it’s not carelessness, then it has to be purposeful: some kind of front, another of his mind games.

And if it’s a front, then there has to be some cold hard assurance behind it. 

And if there’s cold hard assurance behind it, then there is reason to be deeply concerned.

Wherever they’re being kept, Ra’s must feel confident enough in its security that he can flaunt his nonchalance. Most likely, that means a decent to high amount of guards, and probably some advanced monitoring. Based on the time it took to get them here, they can’t be that far outside of Gotham, but frankly, Jason finds it worse that they  _ aren’t  _ far away, yet Ra’s feels this comfortable. 

He rubs his temple. He’s sick of dealing with this already, and the fucker hasn’t even shown his face yet.  _ Ugh. _

The lackey leaves, after one last dramatic parting comment that Jason is  _ certain _ he practiced in the mirror, and then it’s Jason, Timmy, and whatever cameras are on them in the room.

Timmy drops his head into his hands and groans. 

Jason pats him on the shoulder in understanding.

“What did I do to deserve this?” Timmy mutters, which strikes Jason as a bit rich. Like, come on, he’s sitting  _ right here _ and  _ literally patting Tim on the shoulder.  _ A  _ we _ would’ve been nice, at least.

Still, he decides to be cool and let slide the blatant exclusion. Maybe Timmy’s the type to get wrapped up in his own woes. God knows Oracle is.

“There, there,” Jason says, trying to be reassuring. From his experiences with Ra’s, which are, if he’s being honest, rare yet already reaching a critical level, the guy isn’t… unreasonable. Absolutely out of his mind and beyond immoral, sure, but not that unreasonable. “It’s gonna be fine. We just have to figure out whatever Ra’s wants, find a way to trick him into thinking he’s going to get it, and then be on our way.”

Timmy groans again. 

Jason does understand, he  _ does, _ but at this point he feels that it might be getting a little melodramatic.

“Come on, Red,” he says, patting with a tiny bit more force. Not too much, because he doesn’t want to freak the guy out, but like, an emphatic amount. “Game face on. You can’t face Ra’s looking like he just kicked your puppy,”

“I can if I want to,” Timmy mutters back. He pulls his face out of his hands, though, so Jason’s putting it down as a win. Timmy rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Ra’s has seen me at worse.”

Jason raises his eyebrows. “Has he?”

There’s a beat or two of silence, and then Timmy sits up straighter, frowning.

“Okay, if your version of me didn’t get kidnapped and then like, forcefully apprenticized by Ra’s I’m going to be  _ so _ fucking mad,” he says, glaring at Jason.

“I don’t think apprenticized is a word,” Jason replies, eyebrows going up even further. “And. Um. No? That… definitely did not happen. Unless everybody has been keeping a very, very large secret from me for years now.” 

It’s not all that implausible. Jason remembers when he first joined; he had been given no actual information on what had happened with Steph. It was like she barely even existed to Bruce. And Damian hadn’t been talking to Bruce, which thus extended to Jason. And sure, Cass was talking to Bruce and Jason, but she would shut down every time Steph was mentioned. 

And Tim… that had been a lost cause from day one. 

Still. Jason’s  _ fairly _ sure that Tim has never had a significant brush with Ra’s. That’s pretty wildly out of character for Ra’s, from what Jason knows about him.

Timmy flops back onto the ground. “I have the worst life ever,” he mutters viciously.

Jason’s alarmed, to say the least. He pokes Timmy in the shoulder, frowning. Maybe Jason had been too hasty in his earlier judgement; it’s starting to seem like Timmy has a reason to be melodramatic.

“Dude, you can’t just leave me hanging after that. He kidnapped you?”

Timmy turns his head to look at Jason, a dark expression on his face. Jason’s alarm grows exponentially.

“So, this is going to sound insane if you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Timmy starts, “but did Batman ever like, supposedly die, but actually get stuck in time, and then had to be brought back and it also like, tore the family apart and everything, in your universe?”

Jason’s breath catches in his throat. Well. He really hadn’t wanted to think about  _ that _ today. 

Of course Bruce getting himself pseudo-killed is a multiversal constant. 

He can’t quite reply, but the look on his face seems to be enough. Timmy winces.

“Yeah,” he sighs. He seems to withdraw into himself. “It was during then. I was the only one who didn’t believe that Batman was really gone, so I left. Ra’s nabbed me on the way and tried to indoctrinate me or whatever, and I went with it because I realized I could further the investigation through him. So that was like. A year of my life.”

A year? With  _ Ra’s? _ Jason… Jesus fucking christ, Jason doesn’t think he’s qualified for this. It’s fucked up enough that Bruce had died in  _ both _ of their universes, but knowing that the situations were so similar, down to somebody leaving to go on a quest to get him back— that’s—  _ shit. _ It’s unnerving. Are they running on some kind of parallel?

Although, at least Jason didn’t have some millenia-old supervillain try to adopt him. When he went to look for Bruce, Cass had come with him. Had Timmy just… been alone that entire time?

What the  _ fuck, _ Jason really hadn’t expected to feel this much empathy for Timothy fucking Drake today. Even an alternate universe version of him.

Tentatively, Jason pats Timmy’s knee. It’s a ridiculous gesture, but he feels like he should do something.

“That’s… fucked,” he says. “Like, deeply, utterly fucked.”

Timmy rubs a hand over his face. “Tell me about it.” 

From looking at him, and on the chance that their timelines really do line up, Jason’s pretty sure that Timmy is the same age as him. And, don’t get Jason wrong, he’s been through enough shit for like, four lifetimes of therapy, but Timmy’s got this world-weary look about him that makes it seem like he should be pushing 50, and not his early 20s. 

It’s a look Jason’s all too familiar with. He sees it on everybody who’s in this business for way too long, way too deep.

He bites his lip. “Will it cheer you up if I tell you about the disastrous ways in which we handled Batman dying?”

With a snort, Timmy gives Jason a half-hearted grin. “Can’t hurt.”

Jason settles back against the wall. 

None of his family have ever really talked about the disaster year following Bruce’s death, he realizes. Or, if they have, it hasn’t been to each other. Not great, honestly, but unsurprising. Dick joining the family had just… put it all on hold; Jason never realized how accurate the saying  _ it takes a village _ was until it was him and his siblings and his pseudo-grandfather running around after a grieving, whip-smart acrobat child. It had just been easier. To ignore everything, throw the carpet over the stain, and pretend that they were functional enough to handle it all. And then Bruce came back, and it was like none of it even mattered anymore, when the reason it all fell apart had returned.

“Rook?” Timmy says, nudging Jason in the arm. Jason exhales. 

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Got lost in my thoughts. I just realized I’ve never really talked about that time to anybody before.”

Timmy raises an eyebrow. “Sounds healthy,” he comments.

“I don’t want to hear that from  _ you,” _ Jason retorts. Timmy, hypocrite that he is, doesn’t even deny it; he just shrugs and smiles, as if to say,  _ what are you gonna do about it? _

Which is a fair point, Jason will admit. He rolls his eyes and smiles back.

“Whatever,” he says, waving a hand. “You’re the first person to hear any of this, so consider yourself lucky.”

“You have my undivided attention,” Timmy replies, as if Jason can’t see the way his eyes periodically flick to the door, or the way he’s fiddling with his gauntlet, or the way he’s tapping his foot. He supposes there are probably worse times to unload trauma then while you’re waiting on a maniac supervillain to come… do whatever maniac supervillain stuff he wants to do, but not many.

He sighs. “Well,” he starts, “as you can imagine, none of us handled it very well.”

“Colour me shocked.”

Jason snorts. “We all tried to stay in Gotham at first, y’know? Like, if we had just tried a bit harder and managed to stay together, it probably would’ve worked a lot better for all of us… but it didn’t take long for us to all leave. I was the one who was convinced he was alive, in our universe.”

Timmy makes a noise of surprise. “Really?”

Jason shrugs. “Yeah. He was everything to me. I wasn’t going to let him go that easily.”

He’s too caught up in his own feelings to try and analyze the look on Timmy’s face upon hearing that, but he rainchecks the train of thought for later.

“I didn’t have it as bad as you, though,” Jason continues, because it’s true. “When I left to go find him, Knight came with me. I think it fucked her up the most. The way we were acting with each other. Like, I don’t know if anybody else really believed in that whole happy-family thing, but she did. And when it fell apart, she…”

“Couldn’t stay,” Timmy says softly. He looks like he knows the feeling. “Neither could Batgirl. Though, she kinda left because B told her to, through some like,  _ upon my death  _ plan, and then… it was very complicated.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “Isn’t it always. Him and his fucking contingency plans, right? He had one in our universe too, but it was specifically directed at  _ Red Hood _ and nobody else knew, which was just…” Jason rubs the bridge of his nose. “Just. Bad. Bad on  _ so _ many levels. Hood ended up just vanishing. Turns out she went undercover in like, three different organizations without telling  _ anybody _ —no extraction plan, no backup, no nothing—and none of us knew, not even the people still in Gotham, until she pulled herself out on the other side. I think when she finally called Knight, we both had heart attacks hearing what she had to say.”

Tim blinks slowly, eyes wide. “Wow,” he says. “That’s—shit—wow.”

Jason remembers, a little belatedly, that Tim and Steph had dated in his universe, way before he came into the family. If that’s true here as well… then… he sucks his breath through his teeth.

“Yeah,” Jason sighs. “It was a tough race, but I’m pretty sure she came out on top of the unofficial  _ worst possible ways to cope _ competition we all seemed to be having.”

Timmy crosses his arms, shifting uncomfortably. “What was I… or, Oracle, I guess, doing?”

Jason bit his lip. 

He doesn’t know, in all honesty, if he and Tim will ever be able to move past all of the resentment and bitterness that clouds their relationship. They’re sure fucking better than they were a few years ago, but even now, when Jason thinks about Tim during that time, it comes with a wash of anger that he can’t seem to shake.

“What?” Timmy asks. He sounds wary.

_ You were being an absolute dick to anybody who tried to talk to you  _ probably isn’t the nice, or even accurate thing to say. Jason clicks his tongue. 

“You were grieving,” he murmurs. Timmy seems to hear whatever message there is behind the words, because his face drops. “We all were. Your way just involved…”

Timmy purses his lips. “I was a dick, wasn’t I?”

Jason gives him this: he’s observant as hell. He nods, because he’s not about to  _ lie _ in defense of Oracle. “You withdrew into yourself and lashed out at anybody who tried to talk to you. Like, figuratively, but also literally, you just locked yourself up in your tower. Didn’t even try.”

The bitterness seeps into his tone at the end. He can’t help it.

Timmy frowns. 

It’s enough to make Jason feel bad, so he adds, “I mean. We were all awful back then. It wasn’t just you. Oracle and I just have… issues.”

Timmy doesn’t look very reassured. In fact, he looks almost regretful. With a shrug, he says, “Doesn’t sound like it’s out of character for me. And… Oracle’s not me, anyway. You don’t have to try and soften the blow.”

Jason exhales. “Okay. Well, then… yeah, he was a dick. Still is, honestly.”

“Fair enough,” Timmy replies. He gives Jason a weak smile.  _ “Your _ alternate version was a dick too, if you’re wondering.”

“Somehow, I did get that impression.”

“Y’know,” Timmy says conversationally, propping himself up a little straighter on the wall, “he almost murdered me once.”

_ What? _

“Fuck off,” Jason spits immediately, to cover up his absolute horror. What the  _ fuck? _ “How long were you waiting to drop  _ that _ on me?” 

_ Murder? _ The fact that it wasn’t even an attempt, but an almost success—what the fuck. What the  _ fuck? _

Jason feels a little sick. 

See, logically, he knows that it wasn’t him. Obviously it wasn’t him. There’s a million miles between where Jason is right now and where his alternate universe counterpart is, and for everything that unites them, there’s ten things that don’t. He knows all of this, and he knows that he would never, ever, ever hurt one of his family like that, even if they were being a supreme dick; he  _ knows _ this. He knows himself. He has to.

It doesn’t stop the bad taste forming in his mouth. It doesn’t stop his ringing ears.

Timmy chuckles weakly. “As soon as we started talking about this, honestly,” he confesses. He reaches out his foot and taps Jason on the knee. “Hey, it’s okay,”

“No it’s not. I— Jesus,” Jason repeats again, because he has no idea what else to say.  _ Sorry my alternate self tried to murder you? _ Fuck, he is not fucking qualified for this. He always thought he was the most emotionally mature member of his family, but in the face of this, even he’s got nothing to say.

Timmy shrugs. “We’re over it. Mostly. Red Hood has made a lot of ground in being less fratricidal, which I can recognize, and I’m honestly kind of used to it at this point.”

“Used to people in your family trying to kill you?” Jason tries not to sound hysterical, but it doesn’t really work.

“Used to people trying to kill me in general, but yes, also that.” Timmy pauses, and gives Jason a look. “You guys haven’t had a single murder attempt?”

“Please stop saying that like it’s normal,” Jason replies. Just bordering on despairing. “No, we haven’t had a  _ murder _ attempt, what the fuck? We haven’t even come clo—” 

Jason bites down on his lip very hard. Timmy’s eyebrows go up.

“There it is,” Timmy says dryly.

Jason shoots him an irritable look. “Shut up. I don’t even think it counts. It wasn’t really… well, I don’t know. It wasn’t attempted murder, at least.”

“But it made you think twice,” Timmy says. The tone of voice he’s using abruptly takes Jason back to earlier, when they were in the alternate cave. He had heard Timmy use it on Steph. When he was digging for information. Pressing on the bruise.

He shoots Timmy a suspicious look. To his surprise, he’s not met with hostility; Timmy seems to realize what he’s doing, and backs off a little.

Shoulders hunched, he says, “Okay, yeah, you don’t have to tell me. That was shitty to ask.”

And now Jason feels bad for him, after witnessing this kicked-puppy look he’s got going on. Honestly, this is why he avoids Oracle if he can. The bastard is so eerily good at subconscious manipulation. Or maybe Jason’s just the bleeding heart type. 

“It’s fine,” he sighs. He bumps Tim in the shoulder to get the message across. “Let’s save that for our second trauma-dumping session, shall we?”

Timmy snorts. “Will we be doing this again?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Jason asks, throwing an arm around his shoulder. “I’ve decided that you aren’t safe in this universe, and I’m taking you into custody and bringing you back to mine. Remember: Sunday mornings are reserved for breakfast at the Manor, and you have to pretend to forget Shadow’s birthday every year. Apart from that, you should fit right in.”

Jason’s inordinately proud of the fact that he manages to make Timmy laugh, even if it’s just a few chuckles. They’ve both been veering way too deep into the dark and brooding terror of the night trope for comfort.

Seriously? Every year?” Timmy asks, grinning.

Jason nods. “It’s a whole thing. We pretend to forget it, then surprise him at the end of patrol, and he pretends to be surprised.”

Timmy snorts. “Why?”

“No idea,” Jason replies, grinning. “Knight introduced me to the tradition, and she knows Shadow best, so I assume it’s catering to some deep-seated neuroticism of his that nobody else is allowed to know about.”

Timmy laughs. “Brilliant. I can’t wait.” 

As he says it, he uncurls his body a little, and it’s only after seeing the change that Jason realizes how tense he had been before. He takes in a deep breath himself, and when he lets it out, he feels the tension in his muscles ease a little too. Seriously. Why did they decide to discuss their family trauma while being held captive by an evil maniac again? 

Then, like he’s been summoned from Jason’s thoughts, the door slams open. Ra’s Al Ghul steps inside.

Speak of the fucking devil.

“Speak of the fucking devil,” Jason says, just to set the tone of the meeting off right.

“Demon,” Ra’s corrects in his ridiculous prim voice, which Jason knows is somewhat put on because he’s heard what Ra’s sounds like when he’s screaming at Damian, and that is not it. “Demon Head is my correct title, Rook.”

Jason goes to snap something else, because when the  _ fuck _ did this guy learn his name,  _ what the fuck, _ when Timmy puts a hand on his elbow. He’s probably guessed that Jason has the diplomacy of an angry bear.

“Ra’s,” Timmy says, sounding pretty put together for somebody who was recently discussing the death of their mentor and father figure. “What do you want?”

Despite the even tone of his voice, Timmy’s grip on Jason’s arm is very tight. Jason can’t blame him for being wired up. They’re in a bad,  _ bad _ position. They’re essentially at Ra’s mercy, with no weapons, no leverage, and no way to get a distress signal out. 

Jason wishes Bruce was here. Or anybody else, really; he’s never faced Ra’s alone before. Even though Timmy is here as well, he’s got so many Ra’s related problems of his own that Jason still feels a little out of the loop, unbalanced. It’s easier when it’s with Damian or Bruce, and Jason’s just playing spectator to another round of the Al Ghul superpowered soap opera, but with Timmy, he has no idea what calls he’s supposed to make or when he’s supposed to intervene. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to protect Timmy. Or whether he should try at all.

It turns out that Jason’s wrong for being worried. About Timmy, at least.

Ra’s smiles, giving a shrug that makes his stupid cape flourish slightly. Jason  _ knows _ he had to have practiced that. 

“From you, Timothy? Nothing particularly,” Ra’s replies. “You and your displaced companion are my guests today. Please, make yourselves comfortable.” 

_ Displaced companion. _ Jason’s very concerned about how he already knows all of this. Creep.

Timmy narrows his eyes. “And if I’m most comfortable leaving here?”

Ra’s tuts. “I am afraid that is not possible. At least, not until the real star of the show arrives,”

God, Jason cannot  _ stand _ the way this guy talks. Like every sentence is a fucking cliffhanger, designed so that Timmy has to keep asking questions to keep the conversation going. He grinds his teeth.

Timmy’s fingers dig into Jason’s arm when he says, “Just spit it out, Ra’s. We’re not here to play your games.”

“I do not play games,” Ra’s replies cooly. Jason rolls his eyes. “I have simply made an arrangement. After all, it is not an everyday occurrence that an older, alternate version of your grandson appears before you, and I simply must have an audience with him.”

Oh, fuck. He’s talking about Damian. About  _ Shadow. _ Oh,  _ fuck. _

“What? What do  _ we _ have to do with that? How do you even know about that?”

Jason feels dread settle in. It trickles down his spine. Pools in his lungs. 

“You two are a… insurance policy. To make sure that the meeting goes as smoothly as possible. Once my heir and I have talked sufficiently, you will be free to leave.” 

“He’s not your  _ heir,” _ Jason spits. He knows he’s barely holding it together, which isn’t a good way to be when you’re dealing with Ra’s, but he doesn’t care. “Stay the fuck away from him.”

Ra’s just looks amused. “I merely mean to satisfy my curiosity. This is a rare occasion. The universe has such endless possibilities… should I not make the most of this one?”

Jason sneers. “I know you’re planning something,”

Ra’s smiles, looking more amused. “Why, Rook, you’re rather protective. Are you speaking from a bad past experience, perhaps?”

“Rook,” Timmy snaps, before Jason can say anything else too revealing. “Keep it together.” He pulls on Jason’s arm, making him realize how far forward he had started to lean. 

Clenching his teeth again, Jason pulls his arm out of Timmy’s grip.

“Well,” Ra’s says, “I must take my leave now. There is an attendant outside the door; if you require anything, do not hesitate to ask. In the meantime, please, make yourselves at home. I suspect you will not be here for much longer, if I know my grandson. He was always rather… soft.”

It takes every bit of willpower in Jason to not leap at Ra’s and try to strangle him.

Every bit of willpower, and the hand that wraps around his arm again. 

Ra’s gives them one last infuriating smile, like he knows what Jason would’ve done if he had any more power in the situation, and walks out. The lackey from before holds the door open. When Ra’s is out of sight, he gives them one curt nod, and then slams the door shut again.

Jason has to remind himself to breathe in. Then out again. He shouldn’t have lost his temper. Ra’s  _ isn’t _ the one from his universe. He doesn’t necessarily have the same intentions or plans. Maybe he really does just want to talk, and the overwhelming dread that Jason feels at the thought of him being that close to Damian is unfounded. 

Or maybe it isn’t.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“Jason,” Timmy says, sharp and concerned. “What the hell?”

Jason pulls his arm out of Timmy’s grasp again. Sucking in another breath, he turns away. He can’t figure out whether he’s more angry or embarrassed; neither of the feelings help much in this situation, but he can’t bring himself to do anything as ridiculous as  _ hope. _ Not when it’s Ra’s they’re dealing with.

“You have your history with Ra’s,” he mutters. “I have mine.”

It’s not technically  _ his _ history, but it impacts him all the same. Leaves him with a gaping hole of fear and nausea in his chest all the same.

Timmy says, his tone softer. “Share with the class, then.”

Jason sighs. 

“Okay,” he says, patting at his cheeks. “So, I actually haven’t interacted with Ra’s that much. Or anybody in our family, really. Mostly, this is because of Ra’s not caring about anybody except for Shadow, and Shadow being convinced that he can’t let any of us get tangled up in ‘his family problems’ as if we aren’t his family too, but whatever.”

Timmy’s eyebrows have gone up, but he nods for Jason to continue.

“Right,” Jason nods too. “From what we can gather, Ra’s is hellbent on making Shadow take his rightful place as his heir and wants to like, use him to build his great empire, or maybe steal his youth or something, but once again, I wouldn’t know for sure, because Shadow doesn’t tell us  _ anything. _ Ever.”

He needs Timmy to understand how dire this is, actually. Because one day, this universe’s version of Damian isn’t going to be a child anymore, and they need to know what to look out for. He leans forward a little, staring into Timmy’s wide eyes.

Timmy, blinking slowly, repeats, “Ever…?”

“Ever,” Jason stresses. “The last time something went down between Ra’s and Shadow, he didn’t tell  _ a single person _ except for his partner, and the only reason he told her was because he made her promise to kill him in the event that Ra’s managed to bodysnatch him or whatever.”

Somehow, the worst part of that whole situation was that Lian had  _ agreed, _ instead of turning around and telling literally anybody else. It’s so fucking horrifying it almost circles back around to being touching. Like, of  _ course _ she and Damian are best friends. They’re both off the fucking rails.

“Wow,” Timmy murmurs. “Shit. I’m starting to see where you were coming from,”

“Yeah,” Jason sighs. “Fuck. If we’re being offered in exchange, Shadow would probably bend over backwards to make sure that we’re okay.  _ Fuck.” _

“There’s twice as many people than usual dealing with him,” Timmy replies softly. “I’m sure somebody would be able to talk some sense into him,”

He doesn’t even look like he’s convinced himself of that. Jason scoffs.

“Shadow is as unreasonable as a fucking brick wall,” he snaps back. He bites his lip. In a tone way more pitiful than he’d like it to be, he quietly adds, “Especially when it comes our safety.”

Timmy looks… Sad. Hurt, almost. Jason wants to try and dig into the issue, and figure out why he looks so strangely heartbroken, but he’s too wrapped up in his own worries to wonder why Timmy looks like he’s watching a Greek tragedy.

“He really cares, huh,” Timmy murmurs.

Jason shrugs lightly. “He’s the eldest. He’s been there all along. I think he feels responsible for all of us, especially because B hasn’t always… been the greatest. I mean, not so much for me, but some of the others have really been put through it.” He offers Timmy a weak smile. “I’m pretty sure if it had been Oracle here, Shadow would’ve found a way to teleport himself here as soon as Ra’s sent out the message.”

Timmy looks surprised. “Shadow and Oracle are that close?”

“They don’t really act like it, and they’d deny it if I ever said it around them, but…” Jason shrugs. “You can just tell. It runs deep. Even the fact that they’re that emotionally volatile around each other says a lot.”

Timmy crosses his arms and slumps a little. “Huh,” he mumbles. 

“Hey,” Jason continues, trying to lighten the mood a little. “Maybe there’s hope for you and Robin yet,”

Timmy scoffs, but Jason fancies that it’s not as sharp a reaction as it could’ve been. He doesn’t really know what went down here, and he definitely gathers that Kid Damian is an extreme brat, but… 

He’s a kid. And Jason knows what it feels like, to arrive into a family that already seems fully formed and have to try and fit yourself into it. It’s a feat that only the likes of Dick Grayson can achieve smoothly. 

“Tell me about him,” Timmy murmurs.

Jason cocks his head.

After a beat of hesitation, Timmy continues with, “Shadow. Tell me about him. I just… I can’t really imagine what Robin will be like when he grows up.”

Jason can’t help his smile. It’s kinda sad, and pretty weak, but he’ll take what he can get; if he somehow ends up fixing the rift between Timmy and Kid Damian, he’s going to lord it over the rest of his family until the end of time. 

He sits up a little straighter. “Sure,” he says, shuffling a little closer to Timmy. “I have  _ so _ many incriminating stories.”

Timmy smiles as well. It’s also sad and weak, but Jason will take that too. There’s probably worse ways to pass the time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> congrats to jason and tim for being the first people to talk about their feelings in this fic

**Author's Note:**

> do you ever ask yourself like, have you ever felt like this? when strange things happen? are you going round the twist?


End file.
